Michael Fowler: Headless statue created scandal

NAPIER MYSTERY: The headless soldier awaits the return of his head while the Napier Borough Council embarks on a North Island-wide hunt for it and the public puzzles over the disappearance.

New Zealand's first overseas conflict was fought against the Boers in the second South African War, which lasted from 1899 to 1902.

In commemoration of the Hawke's Bay men who served, a Marine Parade memorial was unveiled by Governor Lord Plunket in February 1906.

And there the memorial stood with the soldier atop of the plinth facing out to sea - until his calm was disturbed by the 1931 Hawke's Bay Earthquake.

The force of the earthquake caused the soldier to fall off the plinth and snap his marble head clean off on the roadway.

A Herald photographer posed with the severed head a few days after the earthquake, but later maintained he put it back where he found it.

But some days later the head was nowhere to be seen when the Returned Soldiers' Association went looking for it.

The scandal of the missing head was similar to the angst caused by the theft of the Pania statue in 2005 and made nationwide news.

Rumours circulated. Someone thought it was seen on a truck going to Wairoa, so Wairoa and Gisborne were searched, as were other North Island towns.

By 1936 both the Returned Soldiers' Association and the Napier Borough Council had given up on ever finding the head, with Napier gaining some notoriety as being the only city or town in New Zealand to have a headless statute.

The Napier City Council called for tenders around 1933 to sculpt another head, but they were never acted on.

However, just as mysteriously as it had disappeared, the head reappeared in the same fashion.

A Napier Borough Council workman - who was moving spoil on the Tutaekuri Riverbank, unearthed the head in January 1938.

There was little damage, except for the soldier's hat being slightly chipped and part of it missing - but the face was in perfect condition.

Napier Borough Council could not explain why the head was found there, and no other earthquake debris was found nearby - which meant it was not accidentally scooped up and dumped into the river bed by the clearing gangs.

The most accepted reason around Napier for the head turning up at the river was that the thief became fearful of arrest, and took the opportunity to place it where it could be easily found during remodelling of the Riverbank.

* Michael Fowler (mfhistory@gmail.com) is a chartered accountant, speaker and writer of history.