A century-old shipwreck has been discovered among the most complex seafloor survey ever undertaken in New Zealand. / NIWA
The bones of the Schooner Maroro, wrecked near Pōrangahau Beach in the 1920s, have resurfaced after a heavy swell.
Historian Michael Fowler says the schooner had a troubled history before being wrecked near Blackhead Reef.
Pōrangahau local Tena McLean says it’s the most exposed she has seen the wreck in 50 years.
A schooner wrecked on a Hawke’s Bay beach in the 1920s has been revealed from its sandy tomb on Pōrangahau Beach by high swells in recent weeks.
Tena McLean of Pōrangahau remembers going out to Blackhead lighthouse with her father around 50 years ago and seeing bits of the Schooner Maroro wreckage sticking up through the sands.
“Some years we would go and couldn’t see anything,” McLean said.
Lane and Sons built the ship in Whangaroa, Northland in 1904 as a wooden three-masted schooner weighing 230 tonnes, 126 feet in length, 29.4 feet in breadth and with a depth of 7.6 feet. It named it Maroro, which in te reo can mean “to be strong”, “flying fish” or “wasted”, depending on where the macrons are placed.
The Schooner Maroro sailing. Photo / CHB Museum
Historian Michael Fowler says Gisborne merchants owned the ship and it regularly travelled to Australia but had quite a troubled life before it wrecked.
“One time [in 1922] it took 45 days to get from Newcastle in Australia to Gisborne,” he said.
“It lost its rudder and they were quite worried, obviously in those days you didn’t have GPS or communications.
“It also narrowly missed having a shipwreck the year before it did, due to bad weather.”
About 4am on October 24, 1927, bad luck struck when the schooner was trying to avoid bad weather by taking shelter near Blackrock Reef, 38km north of Cape Turnagain and 72km south of Cape Kidnappers.
The ship hit the reef and the waves carried it to shore, leaving it to be beached in the sands of Pōrangahau Beach.
Fowler says all the crew got off safely and it was hoped to be salvaged by its owners with help from the schooner Kaiaia.
The shipwreck of the Schooner Maroro on Pōrangahau Beach, near Blackhead Reef. Photo / Trina Baker-McFadyen
Unfortunately, the weather again played the villain.
“Rough weather happened again and because it had been thrown over the reef they found it difficult to get off, then it got a hole in it,” Fowler said.
“As you know it’s pretty windy down that coast, it started filling up with sand inside the boat and they eventually abandoned it ... and it was just left there.”
A court of inquiry was held at Napier on December 2, 1927, where Captain JW Jones told the court the weather conditions forced him to shelter near Blackhead.
The court found that the Maroro was beached through the stress of weather, with no evidence of any fault of the captain or the first officer.
Despite no crew perishing in the wreck, a man did die at the scene a few months later.
“In March 1928, a 33-year-old man who was a cook fell down a hole in the wreck and hit his head and he died in Waipukurau Hospital,” Fowler said.
The Maroro was later sold in its wrecked state to Fred Goodman of Gisborne.
“But he probably just took parts out of the ship, as the bones still remain on the beach today,” Fowler said.
The remains of the boat are still visible near Blackrock Reef. Fowler said they are likely to soon sink back down into the sands until the next high seas.
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and spent the last 15 years working in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin, and Napier. He reports on all stories relevant to residents of the region.
