Last year we had a holiday in New Zealand visiting the North and South Islands. At the end of our trip we stayed in Auckland and, since Roz’s paternal grandfather Harry had been in charge of the naval dockyard there for a few years in the 50s, we thought we’d have a look about.
Our goal was to visit the house where he once lived with his family (including Roz’s dad) then the Navy Museum which apparently had on record an oral history by Harry regarding his time there, and then maybe if we had time we try to look up some newspapers of the time as we were aware there was supposedly a few with him mentioned. We ruled out visiting the dockyard itself as it’s still in use by the navy today.
The Dockyard can be found in the suburb of Devonport which is on Auckland’s north shore. From the CBD you can now get there by the Harbour Bridge but when Harry arrived they hadn’t even started to build it therefore the only way from the city was by ferry or some other boat. A bit handy being in charge of a dockyard I imagine.
Today we crossed the bridge by car which probably took just as long as the ferries did then. We first visited Calliope Road where Harry stayed with his family. It’s close to the dockyard and in fact overlooks it as its back garden ends in a cliff. We didn’t do much but look at the house from the outside as it is very much still in use and we understand it is remains owned by the navy.
The Navy Museum was nearby. It was a small house up some steep steps and quite hard to park at with the dockyard so close by so I let Roz go ahead while I found a spot back on Calliope Road. Ten minutes later I entered the museum myself. It was so quiet and dim that I hadn’t noticed anyone behind the desk until a young girl’s voice piped up and directed me away from the exhibits to a back room where I found Roz poring over a book. This was the oral history. I had expected it to be a voice recording but, no, it has been transcribed and filed away amongst about a hundred others in similar blue binding with gold lettering. These are all personal oral histories from some naval personnel recorded as part of the 50th anniversary of the Royal New Zealand Navy in 1991. I’m sure the audio exists somewhere but this was better for us as I could then photograph each page for study at our leisure.
According to the blurb back in June 1991 Harry was visited in his home in England by a Commodore from the Royal New Zealand Navy after a request for an oral history of his time spent at the dockyard. This is how the website describes it:
Captain T.H.B. Shaw was a Royal Navy Officer who was loaned to the Royal New Zealand Navy to be Captain Superintendent of HMNZ Dockyard from February 1954 until 1956. He describes the management of the Dockyard in those days and particularly the change from an old style management structure which was run by people who were ex ERA’s and ex Foremen to a management structure where it was led by professional engineers.
Before we were allowed access to the text one of the curators had to confirm that it was not still classified as some of the other histories are. Fortunately it wasn’t. Still, I won’t put all the images up on the internet. It is interesting overall but not much in a family history way. I’ll put some extracts up in the next part.
