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First Large Craft Built At Auckland.

It is many years ago since there has been a brig in the Auckland Harbour. Probably the last of that rig to sail these waters was the Vision, an ungainly craft, which used to trade across the Tasman a generation ago. Brigantines survived to a later date, but even that relic of the picturesque days of sail has gone. It is so long since a brig has been afloat in New Zealand waters that young people of the present generation have never seen such a vessel, and to them the picture of one would be just as archaic as the counterfeit of one of those frigates one reads about in the sea stories of the days of Marryatt and his friends.

The first vessel of any size that was built in Auckland was a brig called the Moa, which had a varied career. Begun in 1845, she was completed by 1849, when she entered the Sydney-Auckland trade. She was a vessel of about 230 tons, and was built for Mr. W. S. Grahame, a well-known merchant, by Messrs. Niccol and Sharpe. Their slip was in Mechanics' Bay, Parnell, the site being now buried under the reclamation that has gone steadily seaward from the Beach Road. Sharpe was fatally injured as the result of an accident when the stem of the vessel was being placed in position and fell. The building of this vessel was an undertaking of considerable magnitude for such a small place as Auckland was then, and the event caused much interest at the time. After being in the Australian-New Zealand trade for some time the Moa was taken round to the Manukau when the Maori War broke out, and she was there used as a Royal Navy coal depot ship, but was re-rigged at the end of the war and went into trade again. In later years she became a coal hulk at Port Chalmers, and is still afloat—a remarkable testimony to the soundness of the splendid kauri timber with which she was built.

When first launched the Moa was commanded by Captain Norris, and later by Captain Bowden, Captain Thompson, Captain Kean, and Captain H. F. Anderson, the last-mentioned later starting a well-known ship chandlery firm in Queen Street, Auckland. Built for W. S. Grahame, a name very well known in early Auckland, the Moa afterwards passed into the ownership of Henderson and Macfarlane, who ran her between Auckland and Sydney, in which trade she was subsequently replaced by the famous barque Kate.

She was a handsome craft, and the fact that she had been well designed by Henry Niccol (not then over 21 years of age) was shown by the excellent record she had in the trans-Tasman trade. On one occasion, in June, 1851, under Captain Norris, she made the run from Sydney to Tititiri in five days 20 hours. In August, the following year, she made another phenomenally good run. Still under the command of Norris, she did the passage from Sydney to Auckland in what the "Southern Cross" of the day calls "the extraordinary time of seven days." The newspaper says that if the captain had not been solicitous for the livestock, he could have done the trip in from 20 to 24 hours less. He had 300 sheep and 12 horses on board, and lost only two sheep and one horse.

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An interesting relic of the Moa is one of the cherished possessions of the Navy Yard over at Calliope Dock, Auckland. When the brig was stripped in Auckland before being taken round to the Manukau to act as coal depot ship for the men of war, her figurehead was taken off and later was fixed as an ornament at the end of a big shed on what was known as the Naval Reserve, Devonport, the present Windsor Park, at the head of Victoria Wharf. Naval people have a keen respect for these old figureheads, and although the sheds have long since gone, and the navy has shifted its quarters from the reserve to the present yards round Calliope Dock, the thing that was supposed to represent a moa was preserved, and to-day has been restored to a place of honour at the foot of the yard flagstaff. The brig was named after the extinct bird, the legends about which were very attractive to the early settlers, and the figurehead that graced her prow can hardly be said to have been designed upon scientific information. It was a purely fanciful head of a big bird, but one must admit that the primitive carver was an artist in his own line.