The Yates family had extensive holdings in the Far North around the turn of the 20th century. Samuel Yates was born in London in 1826. His father was a prosperous solicitor of Jewish origin (Goetz). Samuel was educated in Liverpool and Paris and was destined to follow his father’s path in the Law. However, in 1852 he came to New Zealand on a trip with his father to visit his younger brother Edward Sydney Yates who was in business in Auckland.
Samuel decided to stay in New Zealand. The two brothers soon moved to Mangonui where they set up a profitable general store and kauri gum buying business. By 1862 Samuel had moved on to Te Paua, on Parengarenga Harbour, and opened a similar business. He married Ani Ngawini Murray, the daughter of Pukepoto shipwright John Borrowdale Murray, who was well-connected locally through her Te Rarawa/ Te Aupouri mother.
The couple bought up large tracts of land, eventually owning the bulk of the Far North peninsula above Te Kao. They set up Te Paki Station on 42,000 acres of land gifted to them as a wedding present by local iwi. Eventually the station ran 7000 sheep and 2000 cattle and provided meat for up to 350 gum-diggers working the land for kauri gum. The animals were usually driven down the 90 Mile Beach to Ahipara and on to Awanui or cross-country to Te Paua for shipping to Auckland and sale; the gum was loaded on coastal vessels at Paua. The Yates prospered. They were popular with the Maori of the North as they provided
a considerable amount of employment. Samuel was appointed
a JP and became known as the ‘King of the Far North.’
The Yates’ lifestyle was high on the local scene. Ngawini was an expert horsewoman and their eight children were well-educated. Since Te Paki Station provided the only accommodation in the Far North the family put up many travellers. Samuel Yates became ill for several years. He died in September 1900 onboard the coastal steamer Paeroa on his way to Auckland for medical treatment. Ngawini, now a competent business-woman, was already fully in charge of the Station, the gum trading and the store at Paua. Her children, five girls and three boys, assisted her in many ways. The eldest son, Gustavus Timoti Yates, born 1872, led the way with the hard work.
Gus Yates contracted with Bailey & Lowe, the prominent Auckland boatbuilders, for the supply of three little launches to service the Yates’ business. And here the puzzle starts; which of these launches (if any) became Norm’s Silver Bell?
Bailey & Lowe had been boatbuilding in Customs Street West, Auckland, on the shores of the Waitemata Harbour since Walter Bailey and his brother Charles Bailey Jr, trading as ‘C. & W. Bailey’, had parted ways in October 1898 and Walter set up with their foreman, Bill Lowe.
Bailey & Lowe very quickly gained a reputation as fine motor launch builders, the go-to people for the new breed of little workboats that did the work, later taken over by motor trucks and busses, for settlements and farms around estuaries, lakes and rivers throughout the country. These little launches enabled these roadless areas to be developed. They carried goods and stores into settlements and farms and carried their produce out for sale in the big towns, whether it was wool, butter, flax or kauri gum. The same type of launch also quickly replaced the working mullet boats and the keel fishing boats around the coast.
Around 1900 Bailey & Lowe set up a builder’s book with photographs and descriptions of most of their yachts and launches. Fortunately, this book has survived at the Maritime Museum. I knew from press reports that Gus Yates had two launches called Tui, built in 1904 and 1909, and that Bailey & Lowe built him three launches over that period. The Museum kindly copied off for me the images of three launches, two marked as “for Yates” and another named Tui.
Coupled with data from other contemporary sources, Government fishing boat records, the New Zealand Yachtsman magazine, the New Zealand Herald and the Auckland Star, it is likely that the first of these launches was finished on November 1, 1904 and shipped north, probably on the Northern Steamship Co’s steamer Glenelg.
This little open workboat, with a hull very reminiscent of a mullet boat, was named Tui. She was fitted with a 5hp San Francisco-built Union engine. Her dimensions were 20ft loa, 5ft 6ins beam and a draught of 1ft 4ins. There was a coaming around the open cockpit and a pipe framework for the canvas cover over the engine, extendable over the forward part of the cockpit. Steering was by tiller. This first boat is shown in the image on its trials in Freeman’s Bay. It is the well-finished little launch with the boys in the cockpit, probably Bailey & Lowe apprentices out for a lark.
The New Zealand Herald mentions this boat in a feature, “Summer Wanderings In The North”, in the issue of November 18, 1905, “The Yates’ oil launch conveys provisions to the various gumdiggers’ camps near these waterways, and returns laden with their produce of gum…..Paua consists of the residences of Mrs Yates, her eldest son and manager (Mr Gustavus Yates), and on the hill above her son-in-law’s (Mr E.J. Samuel), a large general store, which is the only source of supply in the Farthest North; large gumsheds, stables, etc. and further down the shore is the cottage of everybody’s friend – the skipper of the oil launch.”
That skipper was Henry Everett. Aside from carrying stores and passengers around the harbour, Tui did some commercial fishing. The Sea Fisheries Act of 1904 required all fishing boats to be registered and carry their allotted numbers prominently on the bow.
Gus Yates registered Tui in the Mangonui Registry as MGN2 on January 23 1905, “Everett skipper, licensed for netting only”. Quite what happened to this Tui is unknown, but she was removed from the Fishing Boat Register in March 1907. Perhaps she was lost in some way on that unforgiving coast or maybe she was sold on?
Bailey & Lowe built a second boat for the Yates around this time. She may or may not have been called Tui but there is no record of her under any other name that I can find.
The third Bailey & Lowe launch that Gus Yates ordered was another Tui. I made the assumption at first that she was the launch in the third image I got from the Maritime Museum, not a basic workboat but a raised foredeck, flush-deck cabin boat in Bailey & Lowe’s high style of the time, complete with their trademark scrolls around the boat’s name on the trailboards. However, I found that same image in the New Zealand Yachtsman magazine of January 1913. It’s another Tui built by Bailey & Lowe for Odlum & Davies of Auckland in November 1912, the photograph taken at Matiatia, which is unmistakeable. There were indeed many Tuis in New Zealand. It’s a great name for a little launch.
As a result, I am convinced that the third boat built for Gus Yates, the last Tui, and the boat that survives as Norm Wagener’s Silver Bell is the open launch being steered by the gentleman in the bowler (probably Walter Bailey) on her trials in Freeman’s Bay. Her dimensions were 25ft loa, 7ft beam, draught 2ft 5in and she had another 5hp Union engine. She was diagonal built, somewhat unusual for Bailey & Lowe, who had mastered the technique of single skin carvel on frames. Her coamings closely resemble the base of the D front cabin top on Silver Bell; Silver Bell is diagonal built. Launched in Auckland in November 1909 she was shipped up to Parengarenga. Gus registered her as the fishing boat Tui in the Mangonui Registry as MGN30 in April 1910, “Skipper H. Everett, nets and lines”.
A generous, highly intelligent and admirable woman to the end, Ngawini Yates died on 29th July 1910. Without her, the complex Yates family operations were impossible. The Yates era in the Far North came to an end. Ngawini’s headstone describes her as “Beloved of both Pakeha and Maori.”
Richard Keene bought Te Paki Station; everything else was sold. Many of the Yates family moved away from the North. Tui was sold to Joseph Conrad (Hohepa Kanara) who renamed her Silver Bell after a popular song (and also a fancied racehorse) of the time. In September 1914 Conrad registered her as Silver Bell, MGN56, himself as skipper.
I would love to know anything about the Fells boat yard in Kohukohu. I live just about where all that remain of the boatyard and live in a house that I believe may have been built for or by the sais Fells family.