FALL OF RUAPEKAPEKA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 943, 19 January 1911, Page 4

FALL OF RUAPEKAPEKA.

SIXTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. A SURVIVOR OF THE FIGHT. Wednesday and Thursday last were jointly the 65th anniversary of the battle of Ruapekepeka, the final engagement in the first Maori war in the north of New Zealand. The Maori stronghold was the objective against which Captain (Sir) George Grey sent a powerlul force, in pursuance of a campaign to compel the observance of the Treaty of Waitangi, the actual attack being determined upon owing to the unsatisfactory replies sent by the Maoris to him. The attack on Ruapekapeka, which is in the Bay of Islands, 16 miles inland, commenced on 31st December 1845, by which time the British forces were encamped before the pa ; but their guns and ammunition did not arrive till 9th January, 1846. There were 500 Maoris inside the pa, and attacking them were 1173 Europeans and 450 natives, armed with three 32-pounders, one 18-pounder, two 12-pounders, and seven brass guns and rocket tubes. There was more or less intermittent fighting in the interim, but the beginning of the end came on 10th January, 65 years ago, the guns succeeding in making some small breaches in the palisades. Next day was Sunday, and some of the Maori allies and a detachment of the 58th Regiment crept up to the stockade and pushed into the pa. They were met with a volley by the natives left inside, but most of the enemy had retired during the night, and after a period of sharp fighting the enemy fled, and left the pa in the hands of the British. The British losses were: 13 killed and 30 wounded. The fort was destroyed, and it was found that the enemy’s provisions had been exhausted. A few days later the disaffected Maori leaders lost their men, and penitent letters expressed the Maoris’ intention to be as faithful in peace as they had been constant in war, The battle was thus the end of Hone Heke’s “war of ’45,” which bad lasted since July of iS44‘ One of the few surviving veterans who took part in the engagement at Ruapekapeka called at the Auckland Herald Office last week. This was Mr Michael M’Hale, late of the 58th Regiment, who is now 86 years of age, and was

therefore almost a youth then. Mr M’Hale, who is still a hearty man with a memory well stored with the incidents of those stirring days, aid that as far as he knows he is the only Ruapekapeka veteran now left in the city of Auckland.