Land of boatbuilders
New Zealanders first started building boats out of necessity, as they lived in a country totally surrounded by sea.
Fortunately there was a wealth of timber to build the boats from, and the Hokianga Harbour in Northland became the ship-building centre because of its large stands of native Kauri trees which lined the harbour’s shores.
Virtually all boats built in New Zealand before the advent of modern composites were made of Kauri, a straight-grained and flexible wood. Today Kauri trees are protected.
Some of the finest examples of early boat building in New Zealand, boats designed by the Logan and Bailey families, can still be seen on Auckland waters today. They are graceful, historic racing yachts that are more than a century old and are protected by law from leaving the country.
The first boatbuilding activity by Europeans was believed to have been in 1795, when a group of stowaway convicts from a penal colony in Australia was marooned in Dusky Sound, Fiordland, and spent months building new ships to continue their escape.
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