In Their Heyday They Could Lick The Steamers
IN THEIR HEYDAY THEY COULD LICK THE STEAMERS
(Author – Stephen With (undated newspaper article – possibly 1965)
The men who sailed the scows were a breed of their own – tough men in a tough job, sharing a common boast for their ships ….
“The scows would set off down the Waitemata, as many as 20, their sails billowing in the fresh sou’wester. It was a thrilling sight. But now they’ve gone, and the scowmen with them”.
Watching a cluster of 12-footers tacking off Westhaven, 67-year- old, Morrie Carr, weather-beaten from a life spent at sea, had time to cast his mind back to the days when sail reigned supreme on the New Zealand coast.
The 35-ton Rahiri was the last scow to use sail. In December she went out of commission a month after the death of Captain “Jock” McKinnon, her skipper for 35 years. Now only three scows operate from Auckland – under power.
“In their heyday before World War II, they could lick the hull of most of the steamboats,” said Morrie Carr. “They held all the coastal trade then”.
Yet it was the steamboat which soon put the scow out of date after the war, carrying a load a scow would have done in four trips – and carrying it faster.
As settlers spread through New Zealand last century, there came the need for a flat–bottomed craft to navigate the coastal rivers and inlets, hitherto inaccessible to the round–bilged cutters and schooners.
The scow with its retractable centreboard provided the answer. The first, the Lake Erie, was built by the firm of Meiklejohn in 1873. It was virtually a barge with a sail, but the forerunner of the beautiful scow of later years.
Darroch and Niccol built most of them around the Hauraki Gulf, where Kauri timbers were available. They were designed for deck or hold cargo. Timber, coal and livestock were the backbone of the trade. The bigger timber scows carried huge kauri logs stacked as high as 15ft above the deck, which were almost awash as the craft forged into head seas.
The oldest scowman in Auckland, 76-year-old Bill Sayer, said: “Everyone was keen and there was always somewhere to go. If your scow met another at sea, both would pile on all possible sail to prove the faster craft. Their blunt bows pushed the water ahead like the big tankers of today, and a fast scow could make 13 knots before a stiff breeze”.
Scowmen were a breed on their own, beginning at an early age, shovelling shingle and coal barefoot, often at night by kerosene torches.
Men like Harry Carey, one of the originals – “I started on four pound a month, a small fortune to us. We bought our own bedding, sometimes slept on sacks, washed our own clothes. The cook was the most important man aboard, and often the hardest to come by”.
“It could be a leisurely life. We could take a week on the Whangarei run (the scowmen pronounce it Whangaree) or with a strong wind behind us, eight hours. Life could also be tough. In rough weather with timber stacked high on the deck, things could go wrong with the normally stable craft”.
They did in the Vesper in 1916 when she capsized off Great Barrier Island in heavy seas with the loss of all hands.
A similar fate befell the Rangi. She foundered in a gale off the Noises in the gulf, and the crew of five launched the lifeboat. But the seas were too big, and when the boat was washed up in Auckland there was no sign of the men. Both ships were under sail.
CATTLE LOST
The cattle scows suffered the worst in rough weather. Captain McKinnon’s son, Mr George McKinnon, remembers the Rahiri’s golden days on the stock run from Motiti Isalnd in the Bay of Plenty. “It could be tough on the cattle with the lee rail awash. They would fall over each other and the ones underneath sometimes suffocated. We lost some like this”.
The scows ranged far and wide – some like the Zingara and the Moana (94 tons), to Sydney with timber. The timber scows carried sawn timber from the sawmills on the rugger Coromandel coast to Auckland. Others plied the Auckland to Ngunguru coal run, north of Whangarei.
The coal mine was upriver and two steam tugs towed the scows up.
“It was a real race to get up the river first,” one scowman remembers. “First in was first served was the order.
“The more trips we made, the more money we made. But at night sometimes we could spread canvas over one of the scow’s decks, and the people ashore would come aboard for dancing by lantern light. After World War I the mine closed.
“Many scows were laid up during the Depression. They were lean days for everyone, but at least in the scows it was better than wearing blisters on our feet looking for a job ashore. During World War II, many scows went to the Pacific Islands to be used for landing supplies at the beach-heads.
“In the early days scows would take food from Auckland up to the near-starved immigrant settlers in Northland. That’s how Lookout Hill in Whangarei got its name. The settlers used to watch for a sail coming up the harbour with provisions”.
The scows had their exciting moments, too – like the time during World War I when the Moa, sailing with the Rangi off Mercury Island, was intercepted by Count Felix von Luckner and his piratical crew, who had escaped from Motuihi by launch.
The Rangi was going too fast, but von Luckner boarded the slower Moa and “commissioned” her into the German Navy. The crew jettisoned some of the cargo of timber and headed for Tonga. But she only got as far as the Kermadec Islands, before the cable ship Iris ran her to ground, putting a shot across her bow.
The Moa operated until 1936, when she was wrecked off the Wanganui bar.
With more roads being built, the scows began dying out. “When they had to compete with the bigger, heavier steamships, sailing lost its leisure,” said Harry Carey. “There was no place for them in the world of steam power. They became relatively slow and too costly to have surveyed”.
RAIL PARTS
The scows hastened the transition. They carried the rail parts for the twin fingers of steel threading through the country. They also carried timbers down the rivers, and as the timber was cut, the river banks eroded and the rivers silted up, leaving insufficient depth of water even for the scows.
The fate of many can be traced in Ingram and Wheatley’s book. “Shipwrecks – New Zealand Disasters.” Scows like the Isabella de Fraine which capsized off the Hokianga bar in 1924 with the loss of all eight hands.
Under Captain A. Berridge she entered the treacherous channel and was rolled over by huge waves.
The Kaiaia capsized off Cape Farewell Spit in 1916 and three aboard were drowned. The Moana sank with seven crew while carrying timber to Sydney in 1905 and in 1901 the Whakapai, bound for Auckland, sank in heavy seas with her crew clinging to her side.
“A lot of the skippers were incompetent,” said Bill Sayer. “No Masters ticket was needed to skipper and many relied on local knowledge. That is why so many were wrecked. You could see some of the skippers swaggering in the pubs. One said he knew every rock in the Hauraki Gulf. He should have – he hit nearly all of them.”
Today most people associate the scows with Anniversary Day regattas. Ted Ashby remembers them. “The event of the year, they were. The main requirement was grog, and the scowmen could ‘sink it’. Sometimes the scows would race with half a cargo still aboard, just as long as they could race.”
“Skippers from the slower scows would become deck- hands on the faster craft, and every scow would carry a couple of kegs aboard,” said Bill Sayer. ‘Afterwards they would anchor in some quiet cove along the coast and polish off the beer.”
The Owhiti and Jane Gifford are the tail of the fleet of more than 100 scows which over 50 years helped shape an era in New Zealand history. When in 1964 the Rahiri’s sails came down for the last time, she ended a link with that period.
The scowmen disappeared as the scows went out, and now all that is left is a memory of that bustling coastal traffic.
