She was born to work. And she did for 79 years.

She was even named for work – ‘Waitere' meaning to serve, and she did. Tirelessly.

And now she is gone. Violently and sadly.

‘Waitere' was the Faulkner Bros' ferry which plied between Tauranga's Coronation Pier off the end of Wharf Street and Mount Maunganui's Salisbury Wharf. She was built in Picton 1944 especially for the job.

A ‘really whanged' Waitere shortly before she sank. Photos: Elliot Bexon.

Back and forth at eight knots, day in and day out, all weathers, at one shilling and six pence a return voyage thank you, half an hour from wharf to wharf – about 3.25 miles, 5.23km.

'She wasn't pretty,” says Tauranga sailor Bill Faulkner. 'A beamy thing, a workhorse, a classic ferry, nothing elegant about her.”

But a boat of her era.

Memorable times

She was a fixture on Tauranga Harbour until the harbour bridge came along in 1988. People knew her and loved her. They depended on her and she delivered. Waitere had a deep but unglamorous connection with this city.

As a child in the 1980s, Alisha Evans crossed the harbour from Mount Maunganui in the Waitere for 'nana- granddaughter” days in the city.

'Special times, memorable times – a fun boat ride, shopping, a café and then home again on the Waitere.”

Then last month she came to an undignified end. The old lady sank six to eight metres to the bottom of the Bay of Islands after a collision five minutes into another crossing from Russell to Paihia on April 13.

The Faulkner's B Fleet headed back to Tauranga, with the Waitere second from left, circa 1960s. Photo: Brian Worthington.

'My immediate thought was ‘bloody hell!'” says Bill. 'Something must have really whanged it. It was built like a brick s***house and I would have thought a battleship must have hit it to sink it.”

No, not a battleship but an Auckland-registered sport fishing boat. Passengers told rescuers they saw the boat bearing down but were expecting it to veer away. It didn't.

It rode up and over the Waitere's carvel planking and substantial wooden belting around the hull and into the wheelhouse, the strongest part of the vessel, demolishing it.

A rescuer told The Weekend Sun that if Waitere had been struck a couple of metres further astern where maybe a dozen passengers sat in the sun 'we would have been pulling bodies from the water”.

Miraculously, only the Waitere's skipper and owner, 77-year-old Bill Elliott, was injured, although he suffered severe head and spinal injuries.

The final indignity for the proud old performer Waitere was being refloated from her resting place and assisted like some aging and infirm matriarch all the way across the bay to Opua.
It was like a funeral cortège, a guard of honour – with locals, boaties and long-time ferry users lining the shore to watch and pay respects to a servant of the people that had died on duty.

Waitere, the workhorse, is now wreckage, history. But the memories remain.

The zeddies

As a kid, the old salt Bill Faulkner raced a ‘zeddy' – a Z class. It would 'go like hell on a reach with a single luff kite”.

On a Sunday morning, if a westerly was running, they'd wait for the Waitere to pull out from downtown.

'She had a big counter stern – a big round bum that would drag a big wash.”

The boys on their Zeddies would put up a kite, sit on that wash and be carried all the way to the Mount…all the time waving to the girls on the Waitere.

A ‘really whanged' Waitere shortly before she sank. Photos: Elliot Bexon.

If Alisha was a transport planner for Tauranga there would still be a Waitere working the harbour today.

'It was a good system, it worked well. Always there, always operating, always a pleasant way to commute. And you never had to go the long way through Maungatapu. Today a good ferry service would take hundreds of cars off the road at peak time including mine.”

Waitere disappeared off Tauranga's harbour about the time the $25 million harbour bridge opened in March 1988. Waitere was effectively made redundant. The bridge killed the ferry.

Local boaties say the Bay of Islands is where old Tauranga boats go to die.

Waitere followed that passage. And now we salute her.

Waitere 1944-2023.