256-year-old relic of European contact with NZ rediscovered in RNZ podcast

NZ Herald

a day ago

Brendan Wade treasure hunting. Photo / Ellie Callahan
The anchors of the Saint Jean Baptiste
The anchor, estimated at 4.1m long, and weighing more than a tonne, once belonged to the French ship Saint Jean Baptiste, which arrived off the coast of Doubtless Bay in 1769 – around the same time Captain James Cook was making his first voyage to New Zealand.
The ship's crew were dropping dead of scurvy, and its commander, Captain Jean-Francois Marie de Surville, had been forced to make landfall in Aotearoa New Zealand. The crew were nursed back to health by members of Ngāti Kahu living near the northern edge of Doubtless Bay.
Relations between tangata whenua and the new arrivals were initially peaceful. However, that changed when one of the ship's small boats was lost in a storm and washed up on shore. It was claimed by local Māori as a gift from Tangaroa.
De Surville retaliated to what he interpreted as theft by setting fire to a nearby kāinga, and seizing two carved waka. He also kidnapped a local rangatira named Ranginui, who was taken away in chains, and subsequently died of thirst and scurvy aboard the Saint Jean Baptiste.
The storm which precipitated these events also claimed three of the Saint Jean Baptiste's large iron anchors. The ship's logs capture in harrowing detail how the ship was blown 'within musket shot' of the cliffs of the Karikari Peninsula after the cable securing the ship to its anchor snapped. Two other anchors were deployed, but failed to find purchase on the sandy bottom of the bay.
De Surville gave orders to cut the two remaining anchors loose in an effort to save the ship. His second in command, Guilliam Labe, recorded in his journal that 'the vessel stayed for quite a long time without answering to her rudder and we stared death in the face, seeing rocks along the length of the ship fit to make your hair stand on end'.
Thanks to an extraordinary piece of seamanship, the vessel was saved, but the three anchors were lost.
Kelly Tarlton's final treasure hunt
The three anchors remained at the bottom of the ocean for more than 200 years until the first was discovered by famous marine treasure hunter (and aquarium founder) Kelly Tarlton in 1974. It was retrieved from the bottom of the ocean and now hangs above the foyer at Te Papa museum. The second anchor was found later that year by Northland diver Mike Bearsley and installed at Te Ahu Museum in Kaitāia.
The third anchor was located in 1982 by a team including Kelly Tarlton, his daughter Nicole Tarlton, Vietnamese diver Hung Nguyen and Kelly's brother-in-law Peter Pettigrew.
Kelly Tarlton recorded the location of the anchor, but in the 40 years since his papers were lost and despite many experienced divers looking for it, nobody had managed to relocate it.
In the process of making his podcast, Kelly Tarlton's Final Treasure Hunt, host Hamish Williams explored the possibility the anchor might have been illicitly salvaged, and made the centrepiece of a music festival at Te Arai called 'Shipwrecked'.
However, a later expedition to Doubtless Bay with marine engineer Brendan Wade, two of Kelly's former treasure hunting companions, Keith Gordon and Dave Moran, as well as local diver Whetu Rutene (Ngāti Kahu) suggested the anchor was still at the bottom of the ocean.
The team used a magnetometer to search the bay, and detected a large magnetic anomaly on the seabed. However, underwater searches of the location were unsuccessful, raising the possibility that the anchor may have been buried by sediment, or that the equipment was defective.
Then, just days before the final episode of the podcast was released, there was a new development.
Hamish and Fiona Tarlton with flowers for Kelly in December 2020. Photo / Hamilton William
The lost coordinates
Kelly Tarlton had filed the detailed notes of his discovery of the anchor at his Museum of Shipwrecks, and these files were later sold at auction when the museum closed in the early 2000s.
Auction records suggested the files had been sold to Kelly's brother-in-law Peter Pettigrew, but Pettigrew had no recollection of purchasing them, and insisted the records must be mistaken.
However, just days before the podcast was launched, Pettigrew discovered the file buried at the back of a storage unit.
'[It was] the very last carton at the very back of the lock up on the ground level, the lowest rung of all was 'item 65, Kelly's Archives',' Pettigrew explained. But finding the notes turned out to be just the first step.
Marine engineer Brendan Wade, partner to Ellie Callahan – one of the podcast's producers – had become heavily involved in the search for the anchor, lending both his expertise and his equipment, including his boat, a remotely operated underwater vehicle, and a sophisticated sonar-scanning array to the endeavour.
Wade recalled the moment he received the email with Kelly's long-lost notes. 'I thought 'f***ing eureka we've got it!'' But that enthusiasm was short-lived.
It turned out that Kelly's notes did not include precise coordinates. Instead, they had drawings and readings taken using a sextant, an old-fashioned navigational tool used to estimate the location of a ship at sea by referencing landmarks on shore against the position of the sun.
Converting sextant readings into GPS coordinates is not a simple task. Luckily, Wade was at sea working on a survey ship at the time and was able to lean on the expertise of his colleagues.
'There's a bit of clever maths involved to do this, but the boys very graciously taught me,' he explained.
To Wade's surprise, the co-ordinates he calculated didn't match the location of the magnetometer signal found in the previous expedition. He was initially sceptical that Kelly Tarlton had accurately recorded his position.
'I actually kinda thought I just want[ed] to go up and disprove this, because it doesn't match anything else. We've got this [magnetometer signal], that's where the anchor is.'
Brendan Wade with the second de Surville anchor at Te Ahu Museum in Kaitaia. Photo / Ellie Callahan
The rediscovery
Braving wild weather which brought severe flooding to parts of the country last week, Wade motored out to the co-ordinates with his ROV – invoking the spirit of Kelly Tarlton along the way.
'I had a chat to Kelly on the way out there and said 'come on mate, you've to to help me out here!'' Wade remembered.
After several attempts were foiled by heavy swell, Wade finally managed to get his ROV into the water, and was astonished by what he found.
'Out of the gloom was this massive ring, and you kind of look at it and you think, oh, maybe that, Could that be natural? No, it's not natural … it turned out to be the ring on the shank of the anchor. And then as I saw further down, you could start seeing the shank of the anchor laying down on the seabed, and then out of the gloom in this massive fluke, just sticking vertically up.'
Wade says the anchor is sitting at a depth of approximately 28m, and one of its flukes is jammed so firmly in the seabed that the main shaft of the anchor is actually suspended horizontally just above the seafloor.
The anchor is encrusted with marine life including large sponges, and appears to be home to a single Leatherjacket, which Wade's two children have dubbed 'the guardian fish'.
Heritage New Zealand's has confirmed the authenticity of Wade's find saying in a statement: 'By the description of the location and its physical shape and scale it is almost certainly the third anchor associated with de Surville and his ship the St Jean Baptiste. As such, the anchor is one of the oldest relics of early European contact with New Zealand.'
Heritage New Zealand have recommended the site remain undisturbed until tangata whenua have been consulted, and the area can be assessed by a professional archaeologist.
As for what the late Kelly Tarlton would have made of the rediscovery of his anchor 43 years later, his daughter Fiona laughed and said he would have said 'it bloody took you long enough!'.
-RNZ