www.waikatotimes.co.nz
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2011
HISTORY
Gate Pa – Cameron’s humiliation
Maori leaders saw General
Duncan Cameron as a
formidable enemy who
would seek retribution
from those who had fought
in Taranaki in 1860 and
who had stood with Rewi
Maniapoto when the war
came to Waikato.
Tom O’Connor
STORIES OF THE LAND
Towards the end of April 1864, with the
last of the so-called rebels driven from
Waikato, General Duncan Cameron, at
56, was at an age when honourable
retirement from frontline military duty
was an option. He had become
disillusioned with the New Zealand
campaign and had fallen out with
Governor Sir George Grey over the
conduct of the war.
His official objective had been to
destroy the Maori King Movement,
which Grey saw as the main impediment
to land sales in the North Island. With
the Maori King driven from the Waikato,
but still alive in the remote country
south of the Puniu River, Grey accused
Cameron of failure.
Land speculators saw Cameron’s task
as one of driving the rebels from the
Waikato so their lands could be
confiscated and made available to them
at bargain prices. Maori leaders saw
Cameron as a formidable enemy who
would seek retribution from those who
had fought in Taranaki in 1860 and who
had stood with Rewi Maniapoto when
the war came to Waikato.
One of these tribal leaders was Rawiri
Puhirake of Ngai Terangi whose people
lived inland from Tauranga and he
wasted little time in preparing his
defences.
Rather than wait for the British to
launch a surprise attack the Ngai
Terangi leader decided to goad Cameron
into an attack. He knew of the British
propensity of attacking any newly
fortified stronghold regardless of any
Past perfect
Most motorists know the mortification of
their car stalling and holding up traffic,
but spare a thought for Barney Daniel, a
young steamship engineer on the
Waikato River near Hamilton in the
1920s. In those days, the river was still
the main thoroughfare in and out of the
Waikato for much of the heavy freight
and produce of the region.
On his first day on the job, Barney
rose before dawn to start the coal-fired
boiler and, when the captain appeared
about 7.30am, there was a full head of
steam and all was ready for a busy day
on the river.
The captain rang down for steam
‘‘Slow Ahead’’ and Barney opened the
valves sending steam to the three
engines, one amidships and one each to
port and starboard. Within minutes, the
signal bells rang again calling for more
steam and the valves were opened a bit
more. Then the hatch flew open and the
captain roared for ‘‘more bloody steam’’.
Startled, Barney looked over the stern to
see that the ship was making hardly any
headway against the gentle current. He
opened the valves even farther, but to no
avail.
So, thoroughly flustered, he fed more
coal into the boiler and opened the
valves to full steam. To add to his
misery, a crowd had gathered on the
Claudelands Bridge to watch the little
15
To add to his misery, a
crowd had gathered on
the Claudelands Bridge to
watch the little ship sitting
still in the water.
ship sitting still in the water, belching
black smoke and sparks and churning
the river to foam. Eventually the captain
stormed into the engine room where
gauge needles were near danger marks
and the emergency relief valve on the
boiler was giving off a warning hiss.
‘‘She’ll go better with all the engines
going the same b....y way,’’ he said
quietly and returned to the wheelhouse.
To his horror, Barney saw he had the
main midship engine going astern and
the smaller port and starboard engines
going ahead. Valves were turned, levers
pulled and soon the ship was chuffing
sedately up the river nearly half an hour
late.
Barney Daniel spent many years
working little ships in Wellington Harbour, Cook Strait and the Marlborough
Sounds, and died in Picton in 1995, but
never forgot that first morning in the
engine room on a Waikato River tug.
Tom O’Connor
Modernist theme: The Founders Memorial Theatre in Hamilton. Architects Leigh, de Lisle and
Fraser drew on features of Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre when designing the Founders.
strategic importance.
Puhirake chose an open area at
Pukehinahina on the boundary between
tribal lands a small community of
Pakeha settlers where the missionaries
had built a small fence and gateway. The
site was only about three miles from the
British Army encampment at Te Papa.
From a distance the newly constructed
pa looked like a robust fortification but
was in fact two low forts joined by a
short deep trench. The entire structure
was shielded behind palisades. The
centre between the forts looked like the
weak point in the pa.
Ngai Terangi waited for the expected
attack but the British were fully
occupied with driving Rewi Maniapoto
from Orakau and then the defence of
Maketu against a threatened invasion by
a combined East Coast contingent. With
both of these actions concluded, General
Cameron finally turned his attention to
Ngai Terangi.
In reality the new pa posed no threat
to British settlement and could have
been easily ignored.
Perhaps Cameron was stung by the
accusation of failure and saw it as an
opportunity to deliver another blow
against the Maori King Movement.
While he waited impatiently for the
British to attack, Puhirake began
sending invitations to Cameron to come
and fight. He even offered to build a road
from the British camp to the pa , ‘‘so that
the British would not be too tired to
fight’’.
The attack opened on April 29 with an
eight-hour bombardment from 15 canons
and by mid-afternoon a large hole had
been punched through the centre of the
palisade.
It was raining at 4pm when the
shelling ceased and 300 troops were sent
up the hill to capture and secure the
shattered pa, with another 300
infantrymen held in reserve in case they
were needed. They met no resistance as
they charged with bayonets through the
breach in the centre palisades. Inside the
pa looked deserted.
Broken palisades and half filled
trenches from the mud thrown up the
shelling was all they could see until a
volley from about 200 shotguns and old
muskets at ground level from the left
hand fort at about 40 yards ripped
through their ranks.
As they reeled back in confusion
another volley from the right hand fort
at a similar range cut more men down.
No infantry contingent could withstand
that withering fire. In a few seconds 111
men had been killed or mortally
wounded.
The survivors retreated rapidly back
to where they started from and General
Cameron did not send the reserve force.
It was by this time almost dark and he
decided to wait until the morning to
attack the pa again. During the night the
Ngai Terangi defenders gave water and
blankets to the wounded infantrymen
and quietly withdrew into the darkness
leaving Cameron with an empty pa.
Some early historians persisted in
portraying the Battle of Gate Pa as a
British victory as they had succeeded,
albeit at great loss, in driving a powerful
force of Maori King supporters out of
their territory and destroying their pa.
In fact it was one of Cameron’s most
humiliating and inexplicable defeats of
the New Zealand Land Wars.
He had lost 111 of his estimated 1400
men. He had about 15 canons and all the
time he needed to pound or starve the
lightly armed 300 Ngai Terangi into
submission.
After the battle Governor George Grey
went to Tauranga to begin peace
negotiations with Ngai Terangi.
No record has been kept of his
discussions with General Cameron who
shortly afterwards returned to Auckland
leaving Colonel Greer in command of the
Imperial forces in Waikato.
The dead tell tales
Historian Lyn Williams looks at who’s
buried in our local cemeteries.
Lyn Williams
Andrew Brewis
1865-1933
Andrew Seymour Brewis was a
prominent resident of Hamilton for
more than 40 years and served as a
general medical practitioner from 1892
to 1914. Born in Newcastle upon Tyne
in 1865, he gained his medical degree
at Durham University in 1887 and
practised in London and Melbourne.
He married Mary Eleanor Johnson, of
Melbourne, in 1892. After settling in
Hamilton, they lived in a large villa,
Jesmond, on Garden Place Hill.
Brewis’s surgery was a room in the
house – some patients complained it
was too far out of town. At that time,
the commercial part of Victoria St was
concentrated at the southern end. The
couple had four children. They shifted
to Jesmond Dene on River Rd, where
their garden was regarded as one of
the beauty spots of Hamilton.
Brewis was relatively wealthy – he
owned and managed Opoia, a private
hospital.
He had a liveried driver for his
carriage and later for his car, which
was one of the first in Hamilton. He
donated money to the Anglican
Church and land, now Jesmond Park,
to the town.
He and his wife were involved in
many activities, including dramatic
productions and horticultural
competitions. Brewis was a member of
the Waikato Amateur Athletics and
Cycling Club, Lodge Beta Waikato, the
Hamilton Beautifying Society,
Hamilton Bowling Club and Hamilton
Club and was briefly a borough
councillor.
Brewis has been described as a thin,
tall figure, with ‘‘a characteristic
rather high voice’’ and a sense of
humour. This latter trait was not in
evidence during the late 1890s,
however, when he was in dispute with
a Dr G G Kenny at Waikato Hospital:
Brewis complained that Kenny was
visiting Brewis’s patients. The
Hospital Board supported Kenny, who
furthermore made it public that
several times he was compelled to
reverse Brewis’s diagnoses and
treatment. However, Brewis kept the
trust of many as he continued to
practise for many years.
Mary Brewis died in 1913. In 1914,
Brewis married again, to Kate,
daughter of solicitor Lewis O’Neill.
Later that year, Brewis enlisted in the
Medical Corps and served overseas for
most of World War I. He attained the
rank of major and received the OBE
(Medical). He retired in 1919 and died
in 1933. He and Mary are buried in
Hamilton West Cemetery.
Days of future past
Richard Swainson
Suicide bombing is usually assumed to
be a recent historical development.
Japanese kamikaze pilots were infamous
for their suicidal flight paths during
World War II, of course, but the first
modern bombing attack dates from 1981,
during the Lebanese civil war between
Christian and Muslim militants.
As with so many other inventions and
technological advances, evidence
suggests that New Zealanders engaged in
the practice well before our Arabian
friends cottoned on to the idea. Almost a
century earlier, in fact. Admittedly
George Stephenson’s agenda was
personal, not political. A one-time
banking clerk in Cromwell, he amassed a
small fortune mining quartz in the 1870s.
By 1878 he was in the Taranaki, his
wife having left him and taken their two
children. Mrs Stephenson moved back to
her home town of Dunedin to live with
her parents and to take up a position as
a milliner. Stephenson followed some
time later. In her estranged husband’s
absence, Mrs Stephenson had obtained a
court order denying him access to their
offspring.
Bitter and resentful over this,
Stephenson’s behaviour deteriorated.
Contemporary reports describe him as
speaking and acting like a ‘‘madman’’. In
May of 1883, he was charged and ‘‘bound
over’’ in the Police Court for
‘‘threatening conduct’’. He talked openly
of taking revenge against his wife and
her parents.
In the weeks leading up to the
incident, Stephenson is said to have
followed his wife’s every movement.
His actions on the evening of July 7,
1883, were entirely premeditated.
Carrying dynamite that he had earlier
procured under the pretence of mining,
he grabbed his spouse roughly in the
street and within full view of passers-by,
lit the fuse. The resulting explosion
severed their respective heads and hands
from their bodies.
The Manawatu Times described the
affair as a ‘‘horrible tragedy . . . the first
of its kind in the colony’’.
Together again: The grave of Mary Eleanor Brewis, wife of Andrew Seymour Brewis,
faces his grave in Hamilton West Cemetery. Her tombstone also commemorates the
death of their unmarried daughter, Annie Riro, who died in 1953.
Photo: Lyn Williams
MEMORY BOXES
Heritage consultant Ann McEwan peeks behind the
facades of some of the region’s oldest buildings.
Ann McEwan
An awareness of what is missing from
any given picture, explanation, or urban
street scene, is one of the many valuable
lessons that a study of the arts and
humanities has to offer. In Hamilton one
such notable absence is a Town Hall,
which we used to have but then, strange
to say, lost (or at least demolished and
did not replace).
The Founders Theatre often functions
as a de facto town hall and its
unassuming modernity has been the
backdrop to countless graduations,
musical and theatrical performances.
Designed in 1961 by local firm Leigh, de
Lisle and Fraser, the theatre has a fanshaped auditorium and is built of
reinforced concrete and structural steel.
Completed in 1963, the theatre hosted
some of the city’s centenary celebrations
in the following year. Principal designer
Aubrey de Lisle had travelled to the UK
and the US to study modern theatre
design in preparation for the
commission, accompanied by his wife
and fellow architect Mary. The de Lisles
were particularly interested to see the
Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, which
had opened in March 1958. The Belgrade
was the first civic theatre built in Britain
after World War II and de Lisle felt that
‘‘it was the same sort of size that we
wanted . . . and it had all sorts of features
that we were able to import’’.
Whereas the Belgrade was a key
element in the postwar reconstruction of
Coventry, the Founders Theatre
furthered the modernist development of
Hamilton. Affirming Aubrey de Lisle’s
careful design strategy, the building
earned a NZ Institute of Architects
Award of Merit in 1964. A mural by
leading New Zealand painter Ralph
Hotere was installed in the foyer in 1973.
This was subsequently the design
inspiration for the 2002 entrance
addition by local firm Chow Hill.
How your place got its name
RANGIRIRI
Rangiriri, about 14 kilometres from Huntly on the banks of the Waikato River, has been
incorrectly translated as Angry Sky, but the name is very old and is another place name from
the archaic Polynesian language of Hawaiiki of Maori tradition. Rangiriri was also the name
of the home of one of the leaders of the Takitimu migration waka in the Society Islands. It
is also the name of the mythical place where fish come from.
Sources include: Places Names of New Zealand (Reed) and New Zealand Encyclopedia
(Bateman).
Tom O’Connor