Regina Place

When the Amelia Thompson left Plymouth for our fair shores on 25 March 1841, passengers were restricted as to the amount of baggage they could carry.  So the Plymouth Company chartered a separate schooner, the newly built 160 ton Regina, to carry the excess needed to set up house and home in the new colony. She left later that day, hard on the heels of the Amelia Thompson.

Unfortunately she hadn't been ballasted for the heavy seas she was to encounter, so returned to port; not leaving Plymouth again until  12 April 1841, properly trimmed with extra ballast.

Meanwhile the Amelia Thomson arrived off New Plymouth on 3 September 1841 and its band of settlers came ashore eagerly awaiting the Regina, not just to get the extra supplies, but also to have her as a coastal trading vessel, since it was always intended for her to stay on in New Zealand waters.

Regina had a torrid journey out to New Zealand, arriving at Port Nicholson (Wellington) on 31 August 1841, having narrowly avoided tragedy in Cook's Strait. In early October she finally set sail for New Plymouth arriving here on 3 October and also bringing Captain Liardet, the recently appointed New Zealand Company agent. The Regina's arrival was cause for great joy as the settlers were running short of supplies.

Their joy was short lived as barely a month later, on 4 November, a storm blew the Regina onto the shore and she was wrecked on the reef just below today's Regina Place. Being unsalvageable, she was sold by public auction for £150, somewhat less than the £3,600 she cost to build six months earlier.

A final sorry chapter to the Regina came when Captain Liardet tried to recover a cannon which had washed up on the beach and was clogged with sand. He tried to clear it by putting gunpowder down the barrel and lighting it. When it failed to ignite, he went to investigate and it exploded near his face, damaging his eyesight. This foreshortened his stay, causing him to return to England in March 1842.

The demise of the Regina had not only lost the settlers a useful trading vessel, but also a New Zealand Company agent.

This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.