Build Date
1925
Boat Builder
Claude Wells
Length
44 Feet
Beam
12 Feet
Building Tawa
Claude Wells was commissioned by his cousin Rod Wells to build Tawa up to the gunwales at his boatyard at Wakatahuri. After this Tawa was towed to Punga for Rod to winch her his shed to finish the build. This included completing the deck, cabin, cockpit and preparing the engine bed.
Rod ordered the new Petter Semi Diesel engine from an agent who shipped it to French pass for collection. However, collecting the engine in this case meant towing Tawa to French Pass wharf where the engine could be lowered into Tawa’s cockpit. With the engine inside, if not functional, Tawa was towed back to Punga by the two small boats that had brought her there. With the engine inside the bow lifted up making towing the boat through French Pass in a Southeast wind more tricky.
Back at Punga the job of installing the engine commenced and she was fitted with a propeller, shaft rudder, steering gear and exhaust stack and mast. As wells as non-engine requirements like a toilet, brass nameplate for the stern and a brass steering wheel.
Tawa in the 1920s and 30s
In November 1928 Rod Wells completed his River Limits certificate in Tawa enabling him to carry fare-paying passengers. With this all set up, Rod started carrying passengers and later he built a 10 ft by 20ft punt to help him carry timber, livestock and anything else required.
But Rod hit some harder times. The depression hit in the late 1920s limiting the work available to Rod and causing some of his customer to struggle paying his bills. His son recalls in Boats for a Lifetime that Rod and his wife Maisie were largely self-sufficient so they continued to get by at Punga. One way of making money was catching fish in their dinghy which they would then transport to French Pass on Tawa for the Nelson-Wellington Ferry to transport. The money in this was minimal but it still helped them get by. Sometimes the return trip would be made in the dark but Rod knew his way even in the fog. His son recalls in Boats for a Lifetime that if Rod turned the engine off he knew where they were in the Sounds based on the sounds of the sea lapping against the land.
In the 1930s the family moved to Te Horo in Kupe Bay which was sunnier. Rod built a mooring block for Tawa so he could keep her in sight from the house. But work for Tawa was drying up and life could be tough on D’Urville Island, so the family moved to Nelson and Rod started working for the council driving a horse and dray. They kept Tawa and she was stored on a mooring in the Nelson Harbour. Rod also would take passengers on fishing charters to D’Urville Island. But the long steam home with the sea breeze blowing made the return trip less enjoyable and his charters dwindled.
Tawa Moves to Nelson
Rod still made use of Tawa though including taking her to their old home in Te Horo to bring their old Shacklock Orion range back for his wife. In Boats for a Lifetime his son recalls Rod getting the range all the way to Nelson on the aft deck of Tawa but not quite into their home. Rod is said to have left the range on the deck for the night as he returned home late. The next day he rowed out to Tawa and tied his dinghy close to the side of the boat. He then positioned a stiff sack across the bow of the dinghy to protect its paintwork. Only when he was easing the stove from Tawa to the dinghy he stood on the sack, not the dinghy. He dropped straight into the ocean along with the range. Luckily Rod floated to the surface but the range was lost.
Sadly Tawa’s new home in Nelson Harbour was not safe and Tawa would be vandalised from time to time. Rod tried to stop this by moving her to a mooring on the tidal flats that he could see from his house but still Tawa would be vandalised and interfered with as his son calls it in Boats for a Lifetime. So around 1940 he decided to sell Tawa to a man from Whangarei for 450 pounds including a part payment of a 1935 Chev Imperial 7 seater. Rod delivered Tawa to Wellington but he never saw her again.
Tawa After Rod
After Rod, Tawa would go on to become a commercial fishing boat out of Whangarei and later a a fishing charter boat out of Whangamata.
In 2017 the NZ Herald reported on a boat named MV Tawa that was being restored in Whangamata Marina. This boat is said to have been built in French Pass in 1925 and was used on the cream run in the Sounds. It was also a Whangarei Harbour Board tug, a fishing boat and a charter boat. If this is the same boat, Tawa might now be fully restored with a Gardner engine.
References
To research Tawa we used the book Boats for a Lifetime by Yvonne Fells and the New Zealand Herald.
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