Waikato River Commercial Shipping

By R.J.McDougall

In the first half of 1996 well over a century of commercial freight shipping on the Waikato River came to an end. Since the turn of the century the principal business was run by Caesar Roose, who founded the Roose Shipping Company, based at Mercer. In its heyday in the 1920's the company ran freight, passenger and excursion services, from the sea at Port Waikato (where coastal freight was transhipped) upstream to Huntly, Ngaruawahia, Hamilton and Cambridge. From the late 1960's river activity declined and in recent decades river sand was the only freight from, and on, the river. Several small towboats, some sand dredges,  and barges were all that remained of a once-proud fleet. Caesar Roose died in 1967, the Hamilton wharf and depot closed down about five years later, and the remaining fleet and plant at Mercer was sold as a going concern in the mid- 1980's, continuing in the name of W. Stevenson & Sons Ltd.- an Auckland company. By mid-1996 the plant had closed down and the remaining towboats and barges either sold and/or taken to Auckland. In January 1997 only a sand dredge and one barge were at Mercer, both laid up, and the former Roose site was part of a major redevelopment scheme which includes yet another fast-food outlet!

Upstream near Meremere another Auckland-based company, Winstone Ltd., had operated a smaller sand dredging plant, also using dredgers and barges, but this too has wound down over the past twenty years until it too has closed, leaving only an old dredge moored alongside the east riverbank just north of Meremere. The only shipping left on this part of the Waikato River is of course the passenger excursion paddle vessel Waipa Delta atHamilton, recently sold to an Auckland buyer but still in service at Hamilton (refer recent Nautical News).

Visible reminders of Roose Shipping's heyday remain as two hulks on the west bank of the Waikato, between Mercer and Meremere-the large paddle steamer Rawhiti (cut into three sections) and the smaller steamer Freetrader, much-deteriorated. The last vessels of the Roose fleet (1950's onwards): Towboats- all built of steel, for and by Roose Shipping at the company's Mercer workshops. They are characterised by robust construction and much battered plating, from their barge and dredge handling work up and down stream from Mercer (and earlier, as far upstream as Hamilton).

All were about 13 to 14 metres (45 feet) long and diesel powered, most being single-screw. Roose built most of its own barges and dredges. Kaitoa, built 1966. In service into 1996, at Mercer (new design). Kowhai, built 1965. In service into 1996, at Mercer (similar design to Manuwai,1940). Wainui, built 1962, a "pusher" type tug, evidently not successful on the river, because it was subsequently sold (to Auckland?) after only a few years. Opuatia, built 1957, in service later as "spare" tug, usually laid up out of the river for much of the time in the last few years, sold about 1995. In this location, at Mercer, Opuatia has achieved a sort of anonymous "fame" in a 3-second spot in a television advertisement for Toyota-  "welcome to our world". In this 2-minute musical advertisement the un-named bow of Opuatia is being hand-painted blue (from the company green) by an overcoat-clad woman with a paint brush. This is presumably at the time it was sold, then taken away from Mercer. Manuwai, built 1940, became "spare" tug about mid-1980's, and sold about 1990, to Auckland. Now renamed Te Atatu, and owned by Mr. D.N. Brown of Auckland, she is for sale again in February 1997, with an asking price of $65,000. Tere, former steam tug, built 1925 at Glasgow, reassembled at Mercer 1926, 70 feet long, steam tug until 1937, when converted to diesel. Laid up at Mercer (joining the old steam tug Kaitoa, also called Iron Duke) in 1965, and sold 1967. Finally scrapped "in situ" at Drury, South Auckland, 1978.