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White Wings Vol I. Fifty Years Of Sail In The New Zealand Trade, 1850 TO 1900

On The Look-Out

On The Look-Out.

Shipping reporting in the sixties was at the best of times strenuous work, and frequently meant getting up at daybreak no matter how late you had finished the night before. Repeatedly in the summer months I would be up from 5 a.m. until 2 a.m. next morning, because small vessels arrived at all hours, and some of those from the East Coast ports were often, during the Maori war, of more importance than the larger vessels. Whenever the wind was in from the North one had to be continually on the look-out, from early morning until the paper went to press, and the only time that a shipping reporter could really take his ease, and not keep his eye glued on the flagstaff at Mount Victoria was when there was a dead calm on or a strong wind from the South, with the tide running out, which would mean some hours for a vessel to beat up from Tiri to Rangitoto. When available I usually engaged one particular waterman, Tom Munro, at first, and then Joe Cook, both fine oarsmen. Watermen were quite a feature of the waterfront in the sixties, and they used to have their waiting room, or rather house, on the western side of the old Queen Street wharf, just about where the Ferry Buildings stand at the present time.

As an instance of the lively work we had, I may mention that on March 2, 1868, I boarded twenty-eight vessels, mostly coastal schooners and cutters. The skippers always endeavoured to be in port on Sunday. I took a keen interest in the work, and naturally got to know many of the skippers and other officers very well, and they would keep newspapers or news for me.