History – The hermit of Moturekareka Island

Charles Percy Hansen, South African Veteran No 90, Taranaki Mounted Rifles, late of Moturekareka Island, fourth son of the late Captain P Hansen of Greenock Scotland.

So read an insertion in the Evening Post dated April 15, 1944, summarising in those few words the life of a man who by his hermit-like existence on a small island in the Hauraki Gulf became part of local folklore.

He was born in Scotland in 1873 and came to New Zealand as a young man. He left for South Africa in the Waiwera with No 1 Company, 1st Contingent, to take part in the Anglo-Boer War. A slight injury gave him the opportunity to visit family in Scotland, and while on sick furlough he was one of the few New Zealanders to be part of Queen Victoria’s funeral procession in 1901.

On his return home, Trooper Hansen was chosen as part of the escort for the visiting Prince of Wales. He also volunteered for World War I, serving with the Field Artillery.

This canny Scotsman ventured into farming with no capital and while some schemes succeeded, most failed, and by 1924 he was facing his creditors at a bankruptcy hearing. He stated that in 1912 he had only 30 shillings and a pair of blankets, but the owner of a £25,000 sheep station trusted him to pay for it. He still had the pair of blankets at an island in the gulf. By some means he managed to buy Moturekareka and two small adjacent isles.

His lifestyle caught the attention of journalists, in particular his association with the ship Rewa. Formerly known as the Alice A. Leigh, Rewa was a 3000 tonne, four-masted barque built by the Whitehaven Shipbuilding Co of Cumbria, and launched in 1889. She plied the trade routes, taking bulk cargo such as jute, grain and wool from the United States, India and Australia to London.

When a group of Wellington businessmen bought her, she was renamed Rewa. On her last voyage she brought coal from Newcastle to Auckland and there she was to stay, idle, for eight years.

Some dismantling took place before she was offered for sale in 1930. Her demise was watched sadly by a former captain and others who remembered her glory days. Her final journey to Moturekareka Island, where she was to be beached as a breakwater, was reported by one old sailor with obvious nostalgia.

“On a perfect night, punctually at midnight,” he wrote, “the tug Te Awhina made fast alongside the old ship. Only the topmasts and topsail yards were left standing with bights of ropes and Irish pennants hanging everywhere. She steered like a lady, though she must have been ashamed of her unkept and rusty appearance.

“Auckland slept, but as we got Calliope Naval Base abeam, the winking of a Morse lamp called ‘R.E.W.A.  R.E.W.A.  Goodbye to the last of your line. The Navy bids you a fond farewell.’ Slowly, very slowly, as is fit and proper the funeral procession made out through the gulf.’

“The seven-hour journey was not without incident but finally neared its end in the lee of Moturekareka Island. ‘Slow Ahead’ was rung as the barque and her escort edged into the land on the high tide and when the long bowsprit was about a hundred yards from the bush-clad cliffs, the final command ‘Hard-a-Starboard’. “The last task was to run a mooring line from the ship to the beach to hold her to the reef. It was a sad end to a great ship but perhaps in the days to come, my children’s children will make excursion to Moturekareka Island to see the kind of ship in which their grandsire doubled the Horn.” Moturekareka Island was vested as a scenic reserve in 1996 and is a popular place for kayaking and snorkelling so perhaps the predictions of the old sailor known only by the non de plume “Lee Fore Brace” may have come true.