Great grandfather’s ketch
Former Muriwai man Neil Reid, now at the Country Club Huapai, was researching Muriwai shipwrecks when his own name “jumped” out the book he was reading called “New Zealand Shipwrecks, 1795-1970” by CWN Ingram, published in 1972.
Turns out the Captain Neil Reid in the book was the current day Neil Reid’s great grandfather on his dad’s side who came to New Zealand from Carrickfergus (north of Belfast) in Ireland.
The son of John Reid, this Neil Reid was born in 1842 and arrived in Dunedin as a 19-year-old in 1861, apparently attracted by the Central Otago gold rush.
By 1871 he had several properties in South Dunedin in Macandrew Road, south of King Edward Street, adjacent to the Shamrock Hotel (now the Ocean View Hotel) and had sufficient land for grazing horses and cows.
He began a business arrangement in 1871 to build a ketch (a two-mast ship with the rear mizzen mast smaller than the main one) called the Eliza McPhee – named after a wife of boat-builder William McPhee (initially from Nova Scotia) who built the 39.4-ton ship at The Landing in Owaka on the Catlins River in South Otago from January to March 1871.
It was 64.7 feet long, 17.9 feet wide and had a 6.2-foot draft.
Owned by Neil Reid and William Peterson of Dunedin, the Eliza McPhee was launched on March 16, 1871, and sailed for Dunedin on April 9 that year with a timber cargo as ballast.
The present-day Neil Reid learned the ketch went aground at Mayhew Island inside Kapiti Island on June 17, 1876.
The ship was wrecked and surrendered to the insurers.
It was salvaged and then rebuilt, and owned by several people until it was finally wrecked in Waikawa Harbour after breaking its moorings in 1881, having been owned in Riverton for several years, a newspaper reported at the time.
Neil travelled from Muriwai to the Owaka Museum in 2019 to add more to the story, finding the original half-hull model that triggered his build of the scale model of the Eliza McPhee – which he built in six months in 2023 – now on display in the Country Club Huapai main foyer.
Learning more about his great grandfather, Neil says his ancestor married Anne Laverty (formerly from Ballyeastle, Ireland) in October 1873 and they had four children with modern Neil’s grandfather John (1876-1918) the sole survivor past puberty.
Great grandfather Neil Reid died at 37 in Dunedin Hospital on February 2, 1879, from injuries sustained after being kicked by a horse while tending his cattle on January 31 of that year.
His death came not long after the Eliza McPhee’s Kapiti wreck.
Later in the year the model will find a new home at the Owaka Muesum joining other memorabilia from the early European settlement of South Otago.