This story is dedicated to Bernie's dad, otherwise known as Frank. And like all good stories it begins with several questions. Why was Frank Mace sitting astride an unexploded mine, and how did it come to be washed up on a New Plymouth beach? And which beach was it?
As the only photo of Frank Bernie owns, these questions had burned a hole in her for years. The snap was estimated to be more than 85 years old (older than Bernie herself at 82) so there was no one around to provide the answers.
Enter NewstalkZB. When Bernie heard Puke Ariki's weekly TET Taranaki Story aired on local radio, she got in touch with DJ Phil Quinney. Phil Quinney got in touch with me.
The known facts
Francis Henry Kotare Mace was born in 1892 and grew up on the family farm on Wairau Road down by the sea. His father's name was Francis Charles Mace.
Frank's grandfather, Francis Joseph Mace, had been hailed a hero during the Maori Wars. After a comrade was nearly scalped by a musket bullet, that travelled up the back of his neck, over the top of his head and down through his brow, Captain Frank Mace raced forward on his own mount and dragged the soldier to safety. For his bravery, Frank was awarded this country's highest honour, the New Zealand Cross, the equivalent of the British Victoria Cross.
Frank's British-born Great Grandfather Francis Thomas Mace, who had once owned a convalescent home on Madiera, had also won a medal after he chased pirates off the island. In 1852, Thomas packed up his second wife and twelve children and sailed for New Zealand.
In New Plymouth Francis Thomas Mace lived a quiet life, assisting women and children evacuated to Nelson during the 1860s war. Two of his daughters married two Messenger brothers, both major players in early local history, and another married Wellington Carrington. Wellington, though a well known surveyor in his own right, played second fiddle to brother Frederic, the surveyor who came to be known as 'the Father of New Plymouth.'
Frank grows up a strapping Taranaki lad
Young Frank Mace grew up hale and hearty on the Wairau farm, a strapping Taranaki lad. He worked his father's land doing everything he could, from gorse-burning to scrub-cutting to the laying down of roads.
In his spare time he loved to swim, run, hunt and paint. Some of his sketches of the wrecked steamship Gairloch, along with the wreck of the Warrior, are treasures in Bernie's house.
As a boy of 13, Frank had once been asked to mind the Gairloch after she floundered off Timaru Reef. Though his job had been to keep the looters out, somehow Bernice can show you a cabin trunk in her bedroom. 'I don't know where that came from,' she grins.
Until he was called to war in 1914, life was good and full of potential for the young Frank Mace. And at the age of 22 he sailed for England, where army training began in earnest.
The price of going to war
Almost immediately Frank found himself dogged by ill health. A septic forearm sent him to hospital. Once discharged, he continued training until being sent to the front line and into the dreaded trenches of France.
At Passchendaele, Frank was wounded in the right hand, as well as being badly injured across the back when he was hit by a flying board. His injuries meant five more weeks in hospital where he couldn't wait to get out.
But once released, dizzy spells set in and he collapsed. Soon he was confined to bed again, with terrible pains in his back and head.
'I was then sent to Bologne Hospital,' he would later write in an undated letter, in a bid to have authorities grant him the pension he deserved. 'After being there for some time and still no improvement, I was sent to England. After being there for some time and still no improvement, I was then sent to a different hospital in 1918.'
Frank went back to duty as soon as he was released, though he still suffered severe headaches and a weakness in his back. When he fell during a routine march he needed help to get back to camp. Finally, in January 1919, Frank was put on a boat for home. He made his way slowly up the gangway, too weak to carry his own bags.
Optimism and hope
Full of optimism and hope, Frank stepped back on familiar soil. where he prayed that his health would come right. Though he arrived home in March it took until November before he could go back to his beloved farm work. But all those things he had once done easily, caused on-going pain and continued to sap his strength.
By 1920, he had lost all his toenails to sepsis. Every tiny scratch turned bad and wouldn't heal. Refusing to let life be ruled by ill health, he married Mavis Bernice Linn and had two daughters and a son. The family took up land on Ahu Ahu Rd and got back into farming.
But Frank lost weight and energy, until it got so bad he could hardly walk up a slope. In his letter penned in later years he wrote: 'I was continually getting septic sores. I had to have them opened and treated.'
Diagnosed with diabetes - which he was told was due to shock - he would spend six weeks in New Plymouth hospital, where he was put on a new diet. But with no real treatment available, he remained sick and for the next 18 months had to pay others to work his farm.
After continued financial pressure forced Frank to swap his 50 acres on Ahu Ahu Rd for 100 acres at Huirangi, daughter Bernie did much of the work.
Guinea pig treatment
The next trip to hospital saw Frank become a guinea pig for a new insulin treatment. But increasingly heavy doses caused his eyesight to fail and in 1933, more sepsis meant another three months in bed.
Years later he would finish off his letter to the Government: ''My leg was opened in eight places and a portion of the calf of the leg was removed. At the present time my leg in still not healed. The reason I have not applied for a pension previously is that up till now I have been able to keep my wife and three children, but now, owing to having to employ labour to do work I cannot do myself, I find myself in financial difficulties and to carry on I must have assistance.'
In 1950, while lawyers were still arguing his need for a war pension, Francis Henry Kotare Mace died.
The Results
Details of the photo
All Bernie had was that one photo of Frank without even a date on the back. So, on the following Wednesday on TET Taranaki Stories regular slot on NewztalkZB, I asked if anyone knew anything about it. When no information came forth - hardly surprising as Frank's generation has long since disappeared - I did what I should have done in the beginning and began a Puke Ariki archive search.
The only thing we knew for certain was that the man in the photo was Frank. We knew nothing about the mine or where it had washed ashore. We didn't know if it had been safe to sit on, but we didn't think so - it looked dangerously intact.
Still, I couldn't help but like the man who sat on top of it, with his slightly amused expression, in his ex-army leggings and puttees, with the uppermost spike strategically placed between his legs and a lit cigarette between his fingers.
Detective work pays off
As anyone connected with Puke Ariki will tell you, there's little that historian Ron Lambert doesn't know about Taranaki history. I showed him the photo and asked for information. Soon, he handed over a snippet of paper, which proved a good starting point.
In 1919, a local schoolboy, Jim Gould, found a German mine washed ashore on Oaonui Beach. It was almost certainly one of the 45 laid by the German surface raider, Wolf, off Cape Farewell in 1917. It was reported to the local constable at Rahotu who had three locals guard it until it was destroyed a few days later. A number of mines were washed up on Taranaki shores during World War I, but only those found after the end of the war were recorded in the press.
So. Now we had the name of a ship and probably the year the mine was laid. A troll through some naval books threw up some interesting detail on the way these mines were placed:
Wolf's orders were to deliver its mines to important British ports in India and South Africa, but under force of circumstances Capt Nerger added to these the ports of Australia and New Zealand. Sinking ships came secondary to mine laying. Minefields laid by Wolf sank 13 ships and damaged three others. She also captured or sunk 14 ships (half of them steamers and most British) in 15 months at sea. Wolf was a new ship, built in 1913, and commissioned as the passenger liner Wachtfels for the Hansa line in Bremen. At 5,809 tons, she was capable of 12knots and was converted secretly in 1916 to an auxiliary cruiser...
Wolf approached the South Pacific after having been at sea for 6 months, including successful mine laying off Cape Town, Colombo and Bombay. During the subsequent mine laying around New Zealand, then Australia and Singapore, she so successfully evaded detection that anti-raider patrols in the Indian Ocean were cancelled...
...Wolf sailed for North Cape. With 200 mines left, Capt Nerger prepared to lay a field between Cape Reinga, Cape Maria Van Diemen and Three Kings Islands on the night of 25 June 1917. Conditions were perfect, with low visibility and rain squalls.
Preparing for mine laying, the guard rails at the stern of the main deck were removed and doors out to this deck opened. The half ton mines were prepared in the aft hold and raised by elevator. Each rattled along a rail line specially laid on deck (immediately above the hold full of prisoners, who counted them out). Once overboard, the buoyant mine and its sinker separated but were held together by a chain set to the requisite length (for which accurate chart datum was required). With 350lbs of TNT, each mine was set to ride 15ft below the surface. Between 10pm and 3am, 25 mines were laid in groups of 4-5. Not a large field, it was enough Nerger hoped to cause alarm and tie up valuable warships and minesweepers,
Nerger then steamed down the west coast of NZ, the prisoners on board sighting Mt Egmont. Wolf laid its second minefield in New Zealand waters, off Cape Farewell, on the night of 27 June 1917.
From Defending New Zealand
It is estimated that around 80 such mines were laid by Wolf which claimed two ships, the freighter Port Kembla and the Wimmera. No one knew the mines had been laid. This was the first hostile act against New Zealand in New Zealand waters.
The bridge of the Wolf
Image: Mac's Web Log
So the mine came from the Wolf... then what happened?
According to Ron Lambert, the mine might have been one he remembered had been found on Omata Beach. Amazingly, the archives coughed up more information - a different photo taken the same day - showing Frank Mace standing next to a small bunch of unidentified men.
A hand written note said: German Mine on Omata Beach. FHK Mace on RH side of group. Mine floating, farmer went down for wood and saw it floating. Pulled ashore with a chain and dray. 1918-1919.