Ship renovation steaming ahead

Shipwright Colin Brown (left) and Jim McPhillips show off the restored wheelhouse. Picture / Martin Sykes

Eighty years ago today the Auckland steam ferry Toroa was launched from a Freemans Bay boatyard, gliding down the slipway to greet the harbour waters with a gentle splash.

It served four decades on the Waitemata Harbour, carrying up to 10,000 passengers a day and making headlines with strandings and collisions.

Retirement did not agree with the ferry.

It had deteriorated badly when taken into the care of the Toroa Preservation Society 20 years ago. Then it sank alongside the Birkenhead Wharf during a storm and lost much of its top deck.

Despite the rot and rust, the society members stuck to their belief that the Toroa, whose name means Albatross, could be restored.

Three-and-a-half years after the 40.5m vessel was hauled out to a paddock beside the Northwestern Motorway at Henderson, the public can now see how the restoration is progressing in an open day this Sunday to mark its 80th birthday.

One proud exhibit will be a curved wheelhouse, just out of the workshop and painted a gleaming cream.

Society spokesman Jim McPhillips said the paint covered about 300 hours' work by boatbuilder Colin Brown and apprentice Josh Hawke, using traditional methods.

The wheelhouse's chunky base of 150mm by 100mm timber was replaced with knees that were already curved, because they came from a giant Coromandel kauri tree stump.

Not a trace of glue was used in the original - builder George Niccol locked the timber together with mortise and tenon joints.

Mr McPhillips said the wheelhouse would have a big ship's wheel for children to spin at the open day.

"This wheelhouse serves as an example that we have the ability to restore the ship and have it steaming again on the Waitemata."

The ferry's steam engine has been lifted out and is being reassembled and the steam boiler is being cleaned.

The hull is of composite construction - wood fastened to iron frames - and about 100 out of 190 frames have to be replaced.

Sources for the wood and iron had been found but ordering depends on raising $2 million.

Mr McPhillips said the Toroa was the last of the Auckland fleet of steam-powered, double-ended ferries in unmodified condition.

Of the eight albatross-class ferries, four were cut up and went into landfill for the Westhaven reclamation, one was beached and destroyed and two were gutted and converted for restaurants - one is at Tairua, on the Coromandel Peninsula, and the other at Tauranga.