Grant Howard: Museum back to a familiar port of call

If the Navy moves its museum to the Devonport ferry terminal history will have come full circle, for it was on the nearby Windsor Reserve that the service first set up in 1840.

The transfer of the infant colony's capital from Kororareka to Auckland in September of that year brought with it the need for a naval shore establishment.

William Hobson, a naval captain, was quick to spot the deep-water anchorage on the northern shores of the Waitemata, where the Navy's Sydney-based Australasian Squadron could anchor when bringing mail, government officials and stores to the capital.

Hobson chose a naval officer on his staff, Lieutenant Robert Snow, to take command of an area known as the Sandspit but by the time he took up his duties the land was known as Flagstaff because a signal mast and wooden boatshed and store had been put up.

A magazine, built on a rock outcrop almost opposite where the Elizabeth Apartments now stand on King Edward Parade, completed Snow's domain.

Flagstaff was the chosen starting point for a major survey of the New Zealand coast made by Acheron and Pandora from 1848 to 1855, the first undertaken after Cook's original work in 1769.

The base did not remain small for long. The Militia Act of 1858 made provision for the recruiting of naval volunteers, and units were formed at Devonport, Ponsonby and Onehunga. Within two years a sailing launch armed with a gun was based at the Sandspit for training the "navals".

Expansion was even faster after the outbreak of hostilities in the Waikato in 1863.

Commodore Sir William Wiseman, the officer commanding the Australasian Squadron, realised the river campaign would call for a greater naval presence, and he set about increasing the Navy's holding at Devonport.

Wiseman, very aware that the land used by the Navy at Devonport was not vested in the service, wrote to the Admiralty in February 1864: "I have applied to Sir George Grey for a piece of land for the purpose ... of repairing spars, boats and sails". He said he had chosen "the Naval Reserve" at North Shore, where a shed had been built and where material had been provided for a blacksmith's shop.

There was mention, too, of a rope walk and a saw pit. He finished his letter by saying that only the previous day the Colonial Government had gazetted a grant of land to the Imperial Government.

Their Lordships were not amused. Sir William was informed they "could not sanction any permanent form of of naval establishment at Auckland". He was ordered to "confine himself to such temporary measures as the war made necessary".

Nothing daunted, he used men from his own ship, Curacao, to build a two-storey wooden barracks a stone's throw from the present ferry terminal.

The building was to accommodate crews from visiting warships, and the naval volunteers under training. The building also provided for stores and workshops.

Thanks to Sir William, the Navy was anchored securely at Devonport. But it was not a secure anchorage. Once the Land Wars ended, the need for a large naval presence diminished and Devonport began to covet what was an area of prime real estate.

Its first attempts to acquire the land were frustrated by the Russian scare of the 1880s and later by Auckland Harbour Board plans to replace Sydney as the base for the Australasian Squadron.

The harbour board bid failed, leaving it with its new Calliope Dock, then the largest in the Southern Hemisphere.

Opened on February 16, 1888, by Calliope and Diamond, the dock would service all manner of ships, not only naval ones.

In 1890, the mayor offered to the Navy about a hectare of reclaimed land by the dock in exchange for the site in downtown Devonport. The Admiralty accepted and the reclaimed land formed the core of the naval base familiar today. Although it accepted the land, the Navy was slow to move. Only a caretaker's cottage was taken to the site and the barracks remained until they were burned down in 1897.

After that, the borough developed what was known first as the Borough Reserve and from 1911 as the Windsor Reserve.

If talks between North Shore City and the Navy work out, the Senior Service, after 116 years, will be back on once familiar territory.

* Grant Howard is a naval historian and former Herald journalist