PIONEER SHIP-BUILDER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 897, 14 February 1930, Page 11

PIONEER SHIP-BUILDER

MR. WILLIAM BROWN DEAD

HEAD OF OLD FIRM The name o£ Brown is one of the oldest in the history of ship-building in New Zealand. A member of the family, Mr. William Brown, died last evening at Te Kopuru at the age of SO years. Many of the small boats on the Northern rivers were built in his shipyards at Te Kopuru. In IS4O Mr. W. P. Brown, father of Mr. William Brown, started shipbuildins- vnrrt= the Bay of Islands. Mr. William Brown was born there and later learned his trade in his father’s yards. Mr. Brown Joined the firm of Lane and Brown, Whangaroa, about 1870 and soon afterward became a ranuei ux me nrm which has built many boats in the North. In 1901 he moved to the Northern Wairoa district and established the firm of W. Brown and Sons, at Te Kopuru. The firm soon became famous and orders were executed for all parts of New Zealand. A schooner-scow, the Alert, was the first. She was built for the coal trade. The next was a lighter for Borthwick and Sons, Wailara, for carrying frozen meat out to the Home liners. Other boats built by this company were: S.S. Naumai, for the Northern Steamship Company; the scow Advance, for Captain Gash, of Helensville; the auxiliary schooner Tamerina which went to the New Hebrides: the Shamrock, for the Wanganui Meat Company; a lighter for the Sheepfarmers’ Freezing Company, Gisborne; the Echo; the Maidi for the Foxton River trade; the s.s. Toiler, which cost £2,500; the s.s. Wetere, which cost £5,000, and many others. With the advance of roads in the North the demand for river boats decreased and after the war the firm turned its attention to engineering iu Dargaville.

In 1920 Mr. William Brown went to live in retirement at Te Kopuru, but when his wife died last October he returned to Dargaville to live with his son, Mr. Archibald Brown. He was an ardent churchgoer and an elder of the Plymouth Brethren. He is survived by two daughters and seven sons.