EARLY TAUPO STEAMER

Taupo Times, Volume II, Issue 94, 6 November 1953, Page 1

EARLY TAUPO STEAMER

INTERESTIN G LETTERS RECEIVED The "Times" reproduced in its issue of September 11th a photograph of an early Taupo steamboat, which it was thought might have been on the Lake prior to Mr Dan Ferney's steamer Tauhara. Publication of the picture has brought two interesting letters giving more information about this vessel. Mrs H. Lennard, of 26 Arney Crescent, Remuera, states that her father, Mr J. Corlett, of Taumarunui, had asked her to inform the "Times" that in October 1887 he was a passenger on the first trip of the boat, from Taupo to Tokaanu. Other passengers wrere Mrs Blake, bride of Mr George Blake, proprietor of the Tokaanu Hotel, and a companion, and also a Mr Norton. Mr Corlett, who is well known to older residents of Taupo as former Public Works Department engineer stationed at Taumarunui and in charge of the Tokaanu-Taupo area, refers to the boat as being owned by Sproule Bros., and as the first power-driven vessel on the Lake. A Napier corr'espondent, "N.M.," writes that there is little doubt that the boat was 1 owned by the late Mr Wilfrid Cotton Sproule and which ran between Taupo and Tokaanu. He thinks that Mr Sproule had a «/orking partner. Mr Sproule, who was an Oxford graduate, afterwards entered the legal profession and settled in Napier, becoming one of the leading lawyers there. In his young days he was a great walker, and knew the Taupo Country well. He used laughingly to refer to his steamboat venture as a financial failure and his first t lesson in business. Mr J. T. Taylor, of Taupo, states that the boat, without its engine, was taken down to Napier somewhere about forty-five years ago, and was then owned by Mr Edward Boyd, popularly known as "Pekin"

Boyd. It was repowered with a benzine engine, and was used in the fishing business until the year of the Napier earthquake of 1931. It would be of considerable interest in piecing together the history of navigation on the Lake if readers of the Taupo "Times" were able to supply further details of this or other early boats, with their names, dates when built or brought to Taupo, names of owners or masters, and so on. The "Times" has not yet been able to glean the name of this steamboat, which Mr Taylor judges to have been about thirty feet in length, or a little more, and eight or nine feet in beam.