Hawea Street

The Hawea was a 721-ton steamer built at Dumbarton in 1875 by Messrs Denny Brothers at a cost of £35,000.

When the Hawea arrived in New Plymouth shortly before midnight on June 11, 1888, on board were a crew of 38, 11 passengers and two well-known Taranaki racehorses.

After anchoring off the breakwater for the night, the vessel came in to berth on a dark morning with a heavy swell running. As the Hawea reversed to allow the Gairloch to berth first, a heavy bump was felt toward the stern.

The hold quickly began to fill with water and immediate steps were taken to get crew and passengers to safety. Captain Hansby and chief mate William Waller were the last to leave the Hawea at 9.30 am, with everyone safely ashore

The only casualty was the mare Allegro who, exhausted by a long swim after heading first for open water, drowned in the surf. The stallion Armour successfully made it to shore and is said to have taken to his heels and galloped off home to Ōmata.

Following the disaster, the ship's owners, the Union Company, sacked the Hawea's captain, although an official investigation absolved him of any blame. The cause of the sinking was to remain a mystery. There was no evidence of it hitting a rock, hard sand or any other submerged object.

The only ones to prosper from the incident were a group of boys who found a box of currants washed ashore and later some fishermen who declared that several bottles of wine "cellared" in the wreck were very palatable.

The final act for the Hawea came when the dredge Paritūtū was deepening the area east of the Newton King Wharf in 1930. It spent six weeks ploughing its way through the remains of the ship and its cargo of pig iron.

Eighty years after the Hawea became the first vessel to sink in New Plymouth's new port, the name was chosen for a short street in a Merrilands subdivision

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.