From Heritage New Zealand, Autumn 2005

by Sheila Ryan

A Wellington waterfront project has given its intrepid restorers a lift.

Thinking of a weekend restoration project? A nice dining room table? A classic car? Or how about a historic steam ship incorporating a crane capable of lifting 80 tonnes? Four brave Wellingtonians, Joy and John Ackrill, and Bob and Mary Box, have spent their spare time on just such a project, the Hikitia, for the past 14 years.

Says Bob Box: "when the port company decided that it was surplus to requirements, I thought it was a pity because it was the last piece of the port history. The steam tug was gone, the steam dredge had gone, the dry dock had gone; the Hikitia was the only thing left".

Convinced that the ship had life, the group entered a bid, going up against scrap merchants and groups of divers who
planned to sink it to create an artificial reef.“If we hadn’t been the successful tenderer, it would probably be razorblades by now. It would have been scrapped,” Box says.

Joy Ackrill described the excitement of receiving the keys of the ship in April 1990, although she admits that at the time she had only limited experience of things maritime.“I knew what was fore and aft and I had a vague idea of what was port and starboard.”

However her husband, John, is an engineer, and Box, a nautical surveyor, had been involved in the annual survey of the Hikitia for several years. Former crew members of the ship showed them the ropes, and the adventure began. They aimed to do as much work as possible themselves and with help from volunteers.

“We’ve got a regular nucleus of experienced crew,” Box says, “Most of them are ex-seafarers and they like being on the ship, they like giving us a hand.”

But it has not all been plain sailing. In order to be registered, the ship would have had to be dry-docked and surveyed at a cost of at least $200,000. This expense was avoided by restricting the registration of the Hikitia to a “non-self-propelled ship limited to internal waters,” a category that calls for a much less expensive survey.

In spite of this limitation, and the fact that it is, at 79 years old this year, the oldest ship in Wellington Harbour, the Hikitia’s crane has proved its worth many times since its restoration.“In the years that we’ve had it, we’ve done over 200 lifts,” Box says, adding proudly that, when the Round the World Yacht Race came to Wellington, the Hikitia was the only vessel capable of lifting the yachts from the harbour for servicing. And in January, crowds formed regularly to watch it pulling contenders in the Global Challenge out of the water for inspection during their Wellington stopover.

One of the pleasures of restoring the Hikitia was the reappearance of a number of items that had gone missing over the years. The ship’s manual foghorn, which had been loaned to a rugby club and never returned, was brought back. “We’ve had a couple of life buoys returned as well that were found in various smoko rooms around the port.”

Other pieces, including the ship’s bell and steering wheels, have been taken by Wellington’s Maritime Museum for safekeeping. Concerns for the safety of such items are real: one of the telegraphs was stolen from the Hikitia’s engine room during the negotiations for the sale. Fortunately, the Maritime Museum had a similar telegraph on display, and it has come out of retirement to render the ship’s communication system fully functional again.

BUT the Hikitia story has another layer. Concealed by an unassuming hatch on the deck is a ladder that leads down to a tiny laboratory dedicated to conserving New Zealand’s maritime heritage. Members of the Maritime Archaeological Association of New Zealand run the lab on a voluntary basis.

Jack Fry, the association’s technical officer, demonstrates what the lab is trying to prevent. A fairlead brought up from a shipwreck sits on the floor, surrounded by flakes of corroded metal that have cracked off as the piece dried out naturally.

To prevent this happening to metal artefacts that come to the lab, Fry immediately soaks them in a chromate solution. “The
chromate stops the corrosion. So we’re actually leaching out the soluble chlorides,” he says. “And once we’ve done that we put them in caustic soda and put a current on there, and that converts the iron chlorides back to iron.”

Divers have brought many items from shipwrecks around New Zealand’s coast, including cannon balls, a lead toilet cistern embossed with the image of an angel and numerous mystery objects that have yet to be identified.

Fry and association president Malcolm McGregor say divers are not allowed to interfere with historic sites without a permit. As many ships lost in New Zealand waters have yet to be found, the items brought to the lab can help to identify the ships from which they were taken.