Harland and Wolff - Shipbuilding and Engineering Works

A PIONEER STEAMER.

The little steamer Waipara, which was blown up a few days ago on the Okarito bar, where she became a wreck, had had an eventful career, meeting with rather more mishaps than befal the average steamer. She was built nearly forty years ago in 1863, for the Kaiapoi and Saltwater Creek Steam Navigation Company by no less firm than Harland and Wolff, of Belfast.

The Waipara was an iron boat, eighty feet long, with a beam of sixteen feet, and draught of four feet at bow and six feet aft. She came out, schooner-rigged under sail and steam with false keel, which was taken off in port. The voyage from Queenstown, Ireland, lasted 152 days, and heavy weather was experienced from the Cape of Good Hope. Mr and Mrs J. A. Redpath and Mrs Manfield and four children were passengers. The steamer made its first trip to Kaiapoi, and met its first misfortune in August, 1864. A

heavy sea on the Waimakariri bar stove the Boat on the davits, and after crossing the Bar the Waipara went ashore inside, but was floated off next day at 3.30 p.m., and with many festivities was welcomed to Beswick and Birch’s wharf at Kaiapoi.

As time went on the Waipara ceased to run to either of the ports intended by her owners, in fact the company went into liquidation, and the Waparia went to the West Coast, where she was a fairly successful boat, though singularly unfortunate in going ashore. The Marine Department’s reports chronicle the fact that she was ashore in the Grey river in January, 1817, and in June 1882, on the north spit of the Hokitika river in April, 1893, and again in May, 1894, on the Hokitika beach while towing the Moana in September, 1896, and stranded at the same place in October, 1897, while in January 1898. she was stranded at the north beach, Okarito, and declared to be a total wreck.

[Press, Volume LVII, Issue 10800, 30 October 1900, Page 5]