Joe was born at Awanui on April 5, 1873. His sailor grandfather, Joseph Konrad, was Polish; his father was William Conrad, and his mother was Heni (Ripene) Tatu. After an early education at the Subritzky home at Houhora he went to sea as a cabin boy on the SS Rotomahana for two years. I am not sure which Rotomahana this was, the Fraser and Tinne-built 183-ton steamer of 1876, used in the Auckland-Thames service, or the Union Company’s glamour steamer for the trans-Tasman trade built by William Denny & Bros at Dumbarton in 1879.
From there he got his tickets progressively, working on the schooner Fleetwing (Charles Bailey Sr 1879), carrying mainly timber to Australia and the Pacific Islands and fruit back but occasionally carrying sulphur from White Island to Tauranga or the works at Sulphur Beach, Northcote. His final days at sea were as Third Mate on the Government steamer Hinemoa.
Hinemoa was a beautiful little ship, almost yacht-like, a sister-ship to Stella. She was built in Scotland for the Government in 1876 for survey work and the maintenance of lighthouses and the depots on New Zealand’s subantarctic island groups. Some of the small boat work done by the crew of Hinemoa, particularly in servicing lighthouses, was hazardous in the extreme. It was experience that prepared Joe for some testing times to come.
A later crewman on Hinemoa was William Edward Sanders who won a posthumously awarded V.C. for outstanding bravery as a Lieutenant RNVR in command of the Q Ship HMS Prize in an engagement with a U-boat in April 1917. After the war, Sanders was honoured by the award of the Sanders Cup to the Jellicoe Class centreboarders (X Class).
Joe swallowed the anchor around 1899 and settled down with his wife Ariana at Te Kao, at the southern end of the shallow but extensive Parengarenga Harbour. He bought Tui from Gus Yates when the Yates family’s extensive holdings in the Far North were sold up after the death of the matriarch Ani Yates in 1910. He reregistered Tui as the fishing boat Silver Bell with the Mangonui Registry as MGN56 on September 10, 1914 and used her for line fishing and netting in the harbour. There was a good market in the area with hundreds of gumdiggers to feed.
Silver Bell was not quite five years old, an unusually tough little craft with her double-diagonal hull and probably with her equally tough original engine, a 5hp Union (see SIDEBAR).
As Henry Everitt had done before when working for Gus Yates, Silver Bell was in constant use as a workboat and carrying passengers around the harbour. Joe’s experience on Hinemoa fitted him for servicing the Cape Maria van Diemen lighthouse, a huge task for a 25-footer from Parengarenga, all the way around North Cape, around the hazardous tide overfalls on the Pandora Bank. It took seamanship of a very high order.
Among the jobs Joe did with Silver Bell was to run a new cable for the flying fox from the shore out to Motuopao Island on which the Cape Maria van Diemen lighthouse was sited. Samuel and Ani Yates had donated the three-hectare island to the Government around 1874 for the purpose. The flying fox had been set up in 1886 but the wire cable continually rusted and had to be renewed from time to time. A bullock wagon had brought the fresh cable to the shore. It was Joe’s job to get it out to the island. At first he thought it would sink his boat, but he decided the further he went out, the lighter the load would get!
Norm Wagener, Silver Bell’s present owner, relates a story Joe told Norm’s father, Bill Wagener, in later years.
“On another occasion when he was at Maria an easterly got up, so he went down to Twilight Bay for shelter. After dragging anchor and having to steam back towards shore for some time, fuel was getting low, so he made a run for home ending up in the creek at Tapotupotu. A passing musterer found him and said, ‘We all thought you were dead.’ Joe said, ‘I’m not dead and I am hungry,’ whereupon the musterer set off with his dogs to catch a pig which they dutifully cooked.
Many years later, Joe’s grandson and I were having a beer after rugby and discussing Silver Bell. He recounted this story virtually word for word, even down to the name of the musterer. For me it was a lesson in the importance of oral history, especially for Māori, which I have never forgotten.”
In 1921 Joe sold Silver Bell to ‘Rauna Robin’ of Lake Ohia who reregistered her as MGN66. Norm is sure that this was Rauna Dawson who had connections to later owners Tom Norman and George Petricevich. By 1926 she was back on Parengarenga Harbour being run by Tom Norman, working from Tom’s Landing in the upper western reaches of the harbour. The New Zealand Times of June 12, 1926 describes
a trip filming in the Far North at Te Kao.
“Captain Tom Norman, of the launch Silver Bell, was awaiting our party at the landing, and taking final farewell of our genial car-driver, James B. Taafe, of Kaitaia, recognised as the best pilot of the Northland, we set out on our run to Te Hapua, at the northern end of the harbour. With the tide full in, Parengarenga Harbour is a splendid sheet of water, its numerous arms and reaches winding deep among the hills, with mangrove-clad banks and mud flats.”
From 1926 the history of Silver Bell is obscure. Norm Wagener takes up the story when his father Bill became her owner,
“Dad bought her from George Petricevich around 1953. George lived down Subritzky Rd in the upper reaches of Houhora Harbour and the Silver Bell lived in a tidal creek there. Early/mid 1950s, Dad and mate Pip Smith hauled her out in Lamb’s Creek in Houhora Harbour and did a major upgrade including new garboard planks, cabin etc.
Used for pleasure and a stint of commercial fishing but, following the purchase of Mt. Camel, she became the workboat to and from the mount which was landlocked then. Dad bought a flat-deck barge from Lanes in Totara North. He and his brother in their respective boats towed the barge home from Totara North and it was used for sheep, metal etc. In early 1970s, Mt. Camel gained road access and Silver Bell reverted to
a family boat, fishing etc. as she is today.
During the commercial fishing stint, Dad used to take out Joe Conrad/Hohepa Kanara, a previous owner from Te Kao, and it is from him that most of our knowledge comes. Having said that, it is mostly of the time when he owned the Silver Bell and what he did with her etc. rather than her beginnings. For some reason Dad never asked him when she was built and by whom! Joe did, however, say she was towed north from Auckland by the Greyhound.”
Greyhound was the splendid auxiliary (50hp Union) schooner owned by Polish Awanui storekeeper Capt. Johannes Anton Subritzky. Lane & Brown at Totara North had built her for Subritzky in 1899. In 1909, under the command of his son Capt. Herbert Subritzky (who married Louise Wagener), Greyhound had a fortnightly run from her home port at Awanui to Waiharahara, Houhora, Whangaroa, and Auckland with freight (largely kauri gum) and passengers, and return. It is highly likely that Tui/Silver Bell got a tow from Bailey & Lowe’s yard in Freeman’s Bay to Houhora from Greyhound on her scheduled trip North on November 24, 1909.
Back to Norm Wagener, “The (Maritime Museum) photos show her pretty much as Dad described when he first had Silver Bell with a midships structure and a hold fore and aft, as he put it. When he and his mate did their major upgrade in the early 1950s they shifted the engine forward and built the cabin/dodger much the same as it is now.
In my renovations I rebuilt the cabin, renewed the fore and after decks and even made a new tuck. The curved combing was in a bad way and a bit beyond me to copy so with Dad’s consent I squared it off, which actually seemed to make the cockpit a lot bigger.”
All these surnames – Conrad, Wagener, Everitt, Subritzky and Norman – are still in the area. Norm Wagener and Niki Conrad, Joe’s great-grandson, have been extremely helpful in preparing these articles. One of Joe’s direct descendants, Stan Conrad, is a teacher at Northcote College and plays a major part in voyaging waka. He skippered the double-hulled waka hourua Te Aurere, built by Sir Hector Busby, on its maiden voyage to Rarotonga in 1992, in 1995 from Tahiti to Hawai’i, and in 2012 to Rapa Nui (Easter Island).
Joe would have been mighty proud!
