When the “Royal Tigers” Came.

Napier was not without its military life and stir, both before and during the Hauhau wars on the East Coast. As early as 1857 there was a garrison of British troops in the young town. This was a detachment of some 200 of the 65th Regiment, that hard-fighting corps of Indian fame which had for its proud nickname page 26 page 27 “The Royal Tigers.” The 65th had been in New Zealand for twelve years and were by this time veterans in Colonial life. They were sent to Napier as the result of a local intertribal feud, between factions of the Ngati-Kahungunu tribe; really they were not needed, because the pakeha population was never at any time in danger, at any rate not until the early Sixties, when the 65th were busy elsewhere.