Ripapa Island Notes

A transcript of Baden Norris’s talk

History
‘Ri’ means rope, and ‘pa’ means surface. Ripapa means
the mooring rock.
A pā is a place of refuge, a fortified place- a rough
equivalent to a castle in Europe. A pā was not lived in but
retreated to if needed, and it gave shelter.
In 1823, there was an internal Ngāi Tahu feud, and the pā
sheltered people. The fight came to them, and the other
crew had muskets while the people from the pā didn’t. The
pā fell and several hundred people died.
There is a symbolic cloak of guardianship over the island
called a tōpuni, which shows the land to be sacred.
Because of this, you can’t eat or drink on the island. There
is one place where the tōpuni has been lifted, which is
inside the old barracks.
They became a musket fighting pā.
The island is two hectares of land.
In 1860, Ripapa planted a cotton plantation because
cotton supplies were drying up due to the American Civil
War.
Immigration was growing, many people were becoming
unemployed overseas. They sent two colonies of European
settlers over to live in Lyttelton and work on Ripapa Island.
The ships that came over were very bad for diseases and
by the time they got here many people were sick.
The death toll in Britain-NZ in 1860 rose a lot.
The survivors of the ships were not allowed to land, as
everyone was scared of catching disease.
A quarantine station was set up and they were dumped
ashore.
The quarantine station was at Camp Bay and there are
more than 90 unidentified graves there.
A new quarantine station was set up on Ripapa Island, and
it was a good quarantine station. Because of this Ripapa
Island got called the Island of Humanity.
In 1882, there were troops in Afghanistan, and prisoners
were caught. They were taken to Lyttelton Gaol and
worked all day at Ripapa and returned to the gaol at night.
One man escaped by kicking out a piece of corrugated
iron from the building he was in. That man was Jonathan
Roberts and he had been convicted in 1888 in the Timaru
Court for stealing a horse. He escaped but was recaptured
and taken to Ripapa Island. When an argument ensued, he
kicked out the iron and escaped.
The police were very angry as he had now escaped twice.
They had a massive search for him, but the locals wouldn’t
help them, as they were on Mr Robert’s side. One woman
helped them, she invited them into her house and offered
them drinks. Because of this, the police never searched
her house, which happened to be the house that Jonathan
Roberts was hiding in. The woman who hid Roberts was a
relative of Baden Norris (who is telling this story).
He escaped on a steamer to South America and travelled
to Mexico. He got caught up in the Mexican Civil War
which happened to be going on then. He made it to USA
and changed his name. He opened up a sportswear
factory which then flourished, and he became quite
wealthy.
At this point he is anonymous, but they are trying to
release a book which would state who he is in it.
Another story is the one of the German Count Felix von
Luckner, who proposed to use a sailing ship to attack the
Allies. Everyone else thought it was crazy, but he took his
proposal to the Kaiser (the king) and the Kaiser said yes.
The ship had a Norwegian cover, so when they were
stopped by the British Navy at the harbour, when they
boarded them they found nothing. They were let pass.
They then proceeded to sink 15 ships. They would fly the
flag which had the symbol for needing water. The ships
would then stop to help, they would then be boarded by
von Luckner’s crew. The other crew were taken prisoner
and then the ship would be sunk. The crazy thing is that
Count von Luckner succeeded all the sinkings without
actually harming any crew members.
However, word got around, and eventually the Count had
to leave the European waters, and came into the New
Zealand waters. He sunk three American ships before he
accidently sunk his own ship on a reef near Tahiti. But still,
he was optimistic, and decided to sail in two small boats
with only five men to Fiji, going past the Cook Islands.
They made it to Fiji, but some didn’t believe their story
that they were stranded Norwegians, and called the
police.
Count von Luckner and his men were taken to the prisoner
of war camp up near Auckland, in Motuihe. The Colonel
overseeing him (Colonel Turner) was naïve however and
von Luckner was able to get him and his men fixing it the
ship there, named Pearl. They was given tokens for the
work they did, which they could use to buy food, which
they bought chocolate fish with. They then escaped, living
on what they had. But they were captured again and
brought to Ripapa Island.
Count Felix von Luckner was the highest ranking war
prisoner that New Zealand ever had.
After the war he was released and he returned to
Germany. Hitler wanted his ship to fly the swastika, but
von Luckner said no. He was then in open conflict with the
Nazis, which had grown in power.
Later, on 16th February 1968, Count von Luckner returned
to New Zealand but was not allowed to land.

Fort Jervois
Fort Jervois is the least modified fort. There are four
magazines, and there were 100 rounds in each gun in
each magazine.
The fort was the safest place, as it is under two layers of
brick and four metres of clay.
They had a sentry who patrolled around the corridors of
the fort. For light they used oil lamps in lamp bays, with
glass on either side. Obviously though, the fire needed
oxygen, and so they had a copper tube which ran from the
lamp bays up to the surface.
That was the weakness of a fort in another country which
an Indian girl showed. The girl climbed up on top of the
fort, took a rat and dropped it down the tube. The rat,
frantic at the lack of space, ran around, until eventually it
knocked over the oil lamp which exploded. Being loaded
up with all that ammunition, the whole camp exploded.

Canons
There is an eight inch rifle in Fort Jervois which is one of
the rarest guns in the world, there being only 12 left in the
world. Two of those twelve exist in New Zealand.
They were never used on any actual ships, they only ever
had to do practise shots.
There is also a six inch which was the last gun to ever fire.
In 1984 they had new guns. The gun took one weeks work
but only had six rounds. They used one round for a
calibration day - to check whether the gun worked.
However, the gun’s recoil mechanism failed and the gun
could never fire again.
The one round which had been fired, was supposed to be
fired into Taylor’s Mistake which it did, but then skimmed
off and destroyed one man’s garden.
They then had five shells, but no gun.