All Taranaki stories are special, but this one is slightly different. Most are written retrospectively rather than as a story unfolds. As a writer they often make you feel as though the story has been given to you. This one gave this writer a chance to hand one back. All I had to do was find out the details of one old photo...
Bernice Spencer (Bernie) is the eldest child of the eldest child of the eldest child of the eldest child and as she puts it, “I should have been a boy.” In all three generations before her, dating back to when her great-great-grandfather Thomas Francis Mace arrived fresh from fighting pirates off the coast of Portugal, the eldest son in each family has had Francis in his name. Her own dad, Francis Henry Kotare (Kingfisher) Mace was no exception and if Bernie had been male, chances are she'd be Francis, too.
This story is dedicated to Bernie's dad, otherwise known as Frank. And like all good stories it begins with several questions. Why was Frank Mace sitting astride an unexploded mine, and how did it come to be washed up on a New Plymouth beach? And which beach was it? As the only photo of Frank Bernie owns, these questions had burned a hole in her for years. The snap was estimated to be more than 85 years old (older than Bernie herself at 82) so there was no one around to provide the answers.
Enter NewstalkZB. When Bernie heard Puke Ariki's weekly TET Taranaki Story aired on local radio, she got in touch with DJ Phil Quinney. Phil Quinney got in touch with me.
Francis Henry Kotare Mace was born in 1892 and grew up on the family farm on Wairau Road down by the sea. His father's name was Francis Charles Mace. Frank's grandfather, Francis Joseph Mace, had been hailed a hero during the Taranaki Wars. After a comrade was nearly scalped by a musket bullet, that travelled up the back of his neck, over the top of his head and down through his brow, Captain Frank Mace raced forward on his own mount and dragged the soldier to safety. For his bravery, Frank was awarded this country's highest honour, the New Zealand Cross, the equivalent of the British Victoria Cross.
Frank's British-born great grandfather Francis Thomas Mace, who had once owned a convalescent home on Madiera, had also won a medal after he chased pirates off the island. In 1852, Thomas packed up his second wife and twelve children and sailed for New Zealand.
In New Plymouth Francis Thomas Mace lived a quiet life, assisting women and children evacuated to Nelson during the 1860s war. Two of his daughters married two Messenger brothers, both major players in early local history, and another married Wellington Carrington. Wellington, though a well-known surveyor in his own right, played second fiddle to brother Frederic, the surveyor who came to be known as the Father of New Plymouth.
Young Frank Mace grew up hale and hearty on the Wairau farm, a strapping Taranaki lad. He worked his father's land doing everything he could, from gorse-burning to scrub-cutting to the laying down of roads. In his spare time he loved to swim, run, hunt and paint. Some of his sketches of the wrecked steamship Gairloch, along with the wreck of the Warrior, are treasures in Bernie's house.
As a boy of 13, Frank had once been asked to mind the Gairloch after she floundered off Timaru Reef. Though his job had been to keep the looters out, somehow Bernice can show you a cabin trunk in her bedroom. “I don't know where that came from” she grins.
Until he was called to war in 1914, life was good and full of potential for the young Frank Mace. And at the age of 22 he sailed for England, where army training began in earnest.
Almost immediately Frank found himself dogged by ill health. A septic forearm sent him to hospital. Once discharged, he continued training until being sent to the front line and into the dreaded trenches of France.
At Passchendaele, Frank was wounded in the right hand, as well as being badly injured across the back when he was hit by a flying board. His injuries meant five more weeks in hospital where he couldn't wait to get out. But once released, dizzy spells set in and he collapsed. Soon he was confined to bed again, with terrible pains in his back and head.
“I was then sent to Bologne Hospital” he would later write in an undated letter, in a bid to have authorities grant him the pension he deserved. “After being there for some time and still no improvement, I was sent to England. After being there for some time and still no improvement, I was then sent to a different hospital in 1918.”
Frank went back to duty as soon as he was released, though he still suffered severe headaches and a weakness in his back. When he fell during a routine march he needed help to get back to camp. Finally, in January 1919, Frank was put on a boat for home. He made his way slowly up the gangway, too weak to carry his own bags.
Full of optimism and hope, Frank stepped back on familiar soil where he prayed that his health would come right. Though he arrived home in March it took until November before he could go back to his beloved farm work. But all those things he had once done easily caused on-going pain and continued to sap his strength.
By 1920, he had lost all his toenails to sepsis. Every tiny scratch turned bad and wouldn't heal. Refusing to let life be ruled by ill health, he married Mavis Bernice Linn and had two daughters and a son. The family took up land on Ahu Ahu Road and got back into farming.
But Frank lost weight and energy, until it got so bad he could hardly walk up a slope. In his letter penned in later years he wrote: “I was continually getting septic sores. I had to have them opened and treated.” Diagnosed with diabetes - which he was told was due to shock - he would spend six weeks in New Plymouth hospital, where he was put on a new diet. But with no real treatment available, he remained sick and for the next 18 months had to pay others to work his farm.
After continued financial pressure forced Frank to swap his 50 acres on Ahu Ahu Road for 100 acres at Huirangi, daughter Bernie did much of the work.
The next trip to hospital saw Frank become a guinea pig for a new insulin treatment. But increasingly heavy doses caused his eyesight to fail and in 1933, more sepsis meant another three months in bed.
Years later he would finish off his letter to the Government: ''My leg was opened in eight places and a portion of the calf of the leg was removed. At the present time my leg in still not healed. The reason I have not applied for a pension previously is that up till now I have been able to keep my wife and three children, but now, owing to having to employ labour to do work I cannot do myself, I find myself in financial difficulties and to carry on I must have assistance.”
In 1950, while lawyers were still arguing his need for a war pension, Francis Henry Kotare Mace died.
All Bernie had was that one photo of Frank without even a date on the back. So, on the following Wednesday on TET Taranaki Stories regular slot on NewztalkZB, I asked if anyone knew anything about it. When no information came forth - hardly surprising as Frank's generation has long since disappeared - I did what I should have done in the beginning and began to search the Puke Ariki Heritage Collection.
The only thing we knew for certain was that the man in the photo was Frank. We knew nothing about the mine or where it had washed ashore. We didn't know if it had been safe to sit on, but we didn't think so - it looked dangerously intact. Still, I couldn't help but like the man who sat on top of it, with his slightly amused expression, in his ex-army leggings and puttees, with the uppermost spike strategically placed between his legs and a lit cigarette between his fingers.
As anyone connected with Puke Ariki will tell you, there's little that historian Ron Lambert doesn't know about Taranaki history. I showed him the photo and asked for information. Soon, he handed over a snippet of paper, which proved a good starting point.
On Christmas Day 1918, a local schoolboy, Jim Guild, found a German mine washed ashore on Oaonui beach. It was almost certainly one of the 45 laid by the German surface raider, Wolf, off Cape Farewell in 1917. It was reported to the local constable at Rahotū who had three locals guard it until it was destroyed a few days later. A number of mines were washed up on Taranaki shores during World War One, but only those found after the end of the war were recorded in the press.
So, now we had the name of a ship and probably the year the mine was laid. A troll through some naval books threw up some interesting detail on the way these mines were placed: Wolf's orders were to deliver its mines to important British ports in India and South Africa, but under force of circumstances Capt Nerger added to these the ports of Australia and New Zealand. Sinking ships came secondary to mine laying. Minefields laid by Wolf sank 13 ships and damaged three others. She also captured or sunk 14 ships (half of them steamers and most British) in 15 months at sea. Wolf was a new ship, built in 1913, and commissioned as the passenger liner Wachtfels for the Hansa line in Bremen. At 5,809 tons, she was capable of 12 knots and was converted secretly in 1916 to an auxiliary cruiser.
Wolf approached the South Pacific after having been at sea for 6 months, including successful mine laying off Cape Town, Colombo and Bombay. During the subsequent mine laying around New Zealand, then Australia and Singapore, she so successfully evaded detection that anti-raider patrols in the Indian Ocean were cancelled.
Wolf sailed for North Cape. With 200 mines left, Capt Nerger prepared to lay a field between Cape Reinga, Cape Maria Van Diemen and Three Kings Islands on the night of 25 June 1917. Conditions were perfect, with low visibility and rain squalls.
Preparing for mine laying, the guard rails at the stern of the main deck were removed and doors out to this deck opened. The half ton mines were prepared in the aft hold and raised by elevator. Each rattled along a rail line specially laid on deck (immediately above the hold full of prisoners, who counted them out). Once overboard, the buoyant mine and its sinker separated but were held together by a chain set to the requisite length (for which accurate chart datum was required). With 350lbs of TNT, each mine was set to ride 15ft below the surface. Between 10pm and 3am, 25 mines were laid in groups of 4-5. Not a large field, it was enough Nerger hoped to cause alarm and tie up valuable warships and minesweepers,
Nerger then steamed down the west coast of New Zealand, the prisoners on board sighting Mount Egmont. Wolf laid its second minefield in New Zealand waters, off Cape Farewell, on the night of 27 June 1917.
It is estimated that around 80 such mines were laid by Wolf which claimed two ships, the freighter Port Kembla and the Wimmera. No one knew the mines had been laid. This was the first hostile act against New Zealand in New Zealand waters.
So the mine came from the Wolf... then what happened? According to Ron Lambert, the mine might have been one he remembered had been found on Ōmata beach. Amazingly, the archives coughed up more information - a different photo taken the same day - showing Frank Mace standing next to a small bunch of unidentified men. A hand written note says: “German Mine on Omata Beach. FHK Mace on RH side of group. Mine floating, farmer went down for wood and saw it floating. Pulled ashore with a chain and dray. 1918-1919.”
Further into the archives, there was more unexpected treasure - three more photos of Frank. In one he stood next to a name plate from the Warrior. I couldn't wait to show them to Bernie.
And there the story ends. And for a while, that's where the story stopped. I passed all the new information on to Bernie and she was pleased with the results. But unanswered questions remained. Who were the men in the photo, and what happened to the mine? There was no way of answering these questions, until at last, a local historian came up with a specific date: 21 June 1919.
This is the full and fascinating account of the disposing of the mine that ran as front page news on Saturday, 21 June, 1919 in the Taranaki Herald.
“BLOWING UP OF NAVAL MINE - INTERESTING SCENE AT OAKURA
The German naval mine which was secured by the mouth of the Oakura River on Wednesday morning was blown up at 25 minutes to eight o'clock this morning in the presence of about 25 people.
The report was plainly heard within a radius of twelve or fifteen miles from the spot, and the concussion is stated to have shaken houses on the higher levels in New Plymouth.
The scene on the beach was most picturesque and interesting to those who witnessed it. The mine lay about 75 yards from the left bank of the river, and a little below high-water mark, with the end bearing the five horns inclined towards the east.
At half-past seven the onlookers had retired to safe positions five or six hundred yards away. A hole was scratched out at the base of the mine, inside which was the charge of 300lb of guncotton. In this hole a 2 1/4lb charge of guncotton, with detonator and fuse attached, was placed and the sand was heaped back.
Of the four people who remained by the mine to the last moment, one was Mr. John Kendall, who dragged the mine ashore on Wednesday morning, and another was Mr. R. B. Eyre, Collector of Customs at New Plymouth, who in his official capacity, was in charge of the arrangements.
The former held an unlighted match head against the end of the fuse, while the latter struck another match and applied it. The fuse fizzed viciously. During the few minutes while the little curl of white smoke was rising from the fuse there was time to take in details of the scene.
The mine was in the sandy centre of a shallow rock-flanked bay. Beyond the right bank of the river was a headland above which the golden glow of the rising sun was just visible through a crack in the clouds.
On the point of rocks at the westward end of the bay the remains of the hulls of the steamer Gairloch, which was wrecked about 20 years ago, were visible.
Then a spark from the burning fuse reached the detonator, a shoot of red flame was seen, and from the spot where the mine had been there rose into the air and was silhouetted against the eastern sky, a huge column of black smoke and sand, flying out from the edges of which could be seen fragments of mine-casing and rock.
A violent report and shock caused the watchers to flinch involuntarily and after a second or so of quietness, the pattering of falling fragments was heard.
The rush for the crater and souvenirs then took place. The hole left in the beach was bowl-shaped and almost twenty feet wide and four feet deep.
The securing of the mine when it was seen bobbing about in the surf at half-tide by Mr Kendall on Wednesday morning and the subsequent holding and watching of the machine of deadly destruction, was an onerous task, considering the possible results if the mine had drifted away once more into the path of steamers.
It can be wondered how many vessels traversed the waters close to this very mine in its desultory wanderings before it was beached at Oakura. An hour or two after the mine was seen on Wednesday a steamer passed the spot.
The reward to the finder should be a substantial one, as, in a case like this, considerable risk was involved. Mr Kendall was on the beach with his horses and dray at the time.
He took the reins and chains that were part of the harness, waded out up to his waist in the sea and dragged the mine by the mooring tackle as far up on the beach as he could.
Several rocks studded the sand, which was then just covered with water and bump on one of the horns would have had disastrous results.
Messrs. Kendall, E. J. Walsh, F. H. Mace and G. Julian were engaged by the Customs to watch the mine. Considerable difficulty was experienced in holding it on the beach during the storm on Wednesday night.
A fragment of the mine casing fell on the Main South Road, not far from a car which was crossing the bridge over the Oakura River when the explosion occurred. The mine was just to the side of the mouth of the river valley.
As the Oakura Hotel and several smaller buildings were not more than a quarter of a mile away from the mine in a straight line, though sheltered from the direct force by the curve of the ground as it falls to the shore, it was thought that some damage might result.
The windows in the hotel were opened beforehand and the bottles on the shelves in the bar were moved to some place where they could not fall.
Though a severe shock was felt no breakages occurred. Pieces of the debris were picked up not many yards away towards the shore.”
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