| Tauranga Campaign | |||||||
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| Part of New Zealand land wars | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| British Army Settlers militia Māori |
Māori | ||||||
The Tauranga Campaign took place in New Zealand, from 21 January 1864 to 21 June 1864, during the New Zealand Land Wars.
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This campaign started as a side show to the Invasion of the Waikato, where British Imperial Troops, on behalf of the New Zealand Colonial Government, were fighting a confederation of Māori tribes known as the King Movement. The Kingites were receiving assistance, both materials and recruits, from many of the tribes in the North Island. In an effort to curb this flow of support the British sent an expedition to Tauranga, a major harbour in the Bay of Plenty, some 100 km east of the conflict in the Waikato.
Their intention was merely to establish a base and adopt a defensive posture. However the local Māori, Ngai Te Rangi, could not afford to assume that this would always be the case. They responded with threats, insults, abuse, a programme of increasing provocation and then began raiding the British camp. Finally they built a strong Pā, a fortress or defensive position only 5 km from the British camp.
The British commander, Colonel Greer, could not ignore this. Not only did it restrict his freedom of movement but it also limited his control of Tauranga Harbour. He applied to Auckland for reinforcements so he could go on the offensive. His request arrived in Auckland just as the active conflict in Waikato ended. The British commander, General Duncan Cameron, had just returned to Auckland where he had been experiencing a lot of criticism from the press and the Colonial government, who saw the Waikato Campaign as a failure. True, they had conquered and annexed a lot of territory but this had always been only the unspoken objective. The ostensible reason for invading the Waikato had been decisively to beat the Māori in battle and draw an end to the King Movement. It is reasonable to assume that Cameron saw Tauranga as a chance to achieve a decisive victory. Whatever the reasons, he immediately sailed for Tauranga with his entire reserve, bringing the garrison up to 1700 men.
Meanwhile fighting had already broken out nearby. A large contingent of East Coast Māori, possibly as many as 700 warriors, were making their way towards the conflict at Waikato. Their route took them through the territory of another tribe which saw themselves as allies of the Pākehā, the Arawa tribe based around Rotorua. Forewarned of this, the Arawa chiefs called back their tribesmen, many of whom were working in Auckland or further north. Pausing only in Tauranga to borrow guns from the British, they hastened onward to Rotorua. Four hundred warriors of the tribe were mobilized and they met and held the East Coast Māori on 7 April in a two day battle on the shores of Lake Rotoiti.
The invaders fell back towards Maketu, a small settlement on the coast south east of Tauranga. A contingent of British troops and Colonial Militia hastily occupied the area and built a substantial redoubt on a nearby hilltop. In the event the enemy did not arrive for two weeks, until 27 April by which time a pair of field guns had also been installed. When they eventually arrived the East Coast Māori surrounded the redoubt and began digging trenches. The rest of the day was spent in desultory gun fire that achieved very little.
The following day reinforcements for the defenders arrived in the form of 300 Te Arawa warriors and two British naval steamships, one of them a heavily armed corvette. These were able to anchor close in to shore and bombard the attackers at will. The East Coast Māori soon found their position untenable and had to retreat. They tried to dig in further down the coast but were promptly attacked by the militia, the New Zealand Forest Rangers led by Captain Thomas McDonnell. A running fight through the sand dunes ensued and continued until dusk and was then resumed in the morning with the Arawa Māori lending enthusiastic assistance. Meanwhile the two naval ships kept pace with the fighting and any of the enemy Māori coming too close to the shore line was met with cannon fire.
Eventually the East Coast Māori dispersed into the swamps and returned home.
Gate Pā is the name given to a fortress the Māori built only 5 km from the main British base at Tauranga. The name comes from its appearance, the palisade looked liked a picket fence while a higher part in the middle resembled a gate. By the end of April the British were ready to attack. They had 1700 men and were opposed by merely 230 Māori, it looked like a good opportunity to score a decisive victory.
A heavy bombardment began at daybreak on 29 April 1864 and continued for eight hours. The British had 17 artillery pieces, including one of 110 pounds (50 kg). By mid afternoon the Pā looked as if it had been demolished and there was a large breach in the centre of the palisade. At 4 p.m. the barrage was lifted and 300 troops were sent up to capture and secure the position.
Within ten minutes well over a hundred of them were dead or wounded. There was no second assault. During the night the Māori gave assistance to the wounded and collected their weapons, by day break they had abandoned the position.
Gate Pā was the single most devastating defeat suffered by the British military in the whole of the Māori Wars.
General Cameron was an able commander of the Imperial forces; in his past experiences, he witnessed the cost of making a frontal assault on a defended Pā and he was concerned with the safety of his troops. Nevertheless, he ordered such an assault on Gate Pā. It seems likely that he believed the bombardment had been long and intense enough to extinguish all resistance from within the Pa. Revisionist historian James Belich made the widely-refuted claim that Gate Pā absorbed in eight hours a greater weight of explosives per square metre than did the German trenches in the week long bombardment leading up to the Battle of the Somme in World War I. This was patently absurd considering the artillery available to the British forces consisted of 17 field pieces firing over the course of eight hours, while a major German strongpoint in World War I could potentially be the target of hundreds of the 1,500 guns employed in the eight day preliminary barrage leading up to the Somme offensive.
But Gate Pā wasn't quite what it appeared to be. From the British positions it looked like a fairly large strongpoint occupying the entire hill top. In fact it was much smaller, being two low redoubts on either side of the ridge joined by a deep trench about forty metres long and the whole shielded by a strong wooden palisade. It seems likely that British concentrated their barrage towards the centre, that is where the palisade had collapsed and that is where the attack went in. Meanwhile the two redoubts had been very strongly built with deep and effective bombproof shelters. The Māori may have been deafened by the bombardment, but as soon as it ended they were able to unleash a devastating ambush.
To contemporaries Gate Pā was seen as a shattering defeat. Indeed it was. The perception was that 1700 elite British troops had been defeated by 230 half naked savages. The arrogance of the settlers and the hubris of the British Empire took a serious blow. Governor George Grey came down to Tauranga and began peace negotiations. Cameron returned to Auckland leaving Colonel Greer in command, with orders to patrol aggressively and, if he found Maori digging in or attempting to create a pa, to attack immediately and disrupt the work.
Colonel Greer continued the campaign by conducting patrols in strength with 594 men of the 43rd Regiment and 68th Regiment On 21 June he came upon a force of about 500 Māori building a new Pā at Te Ranga, some seven kilometres from his base. They had done little more than dig a rifle pits and trenches, with no outer works. However Greer had sufficient respect for his enemy that he immediately called for reinforcements. This was the opportunity Cameron had always been looking for, to be able to meet the Māori in the open. The Māori fought desperately but they were overwhelmed by the British soldiery, with 106 Maori dead buried in their own earthworks.
The success at Te Ranga was hailed as a great British victory, one that wiped out the shame of the defeat at Gate Pa. It certainly did a great deal to restore British morale particularly for the 43rd Regiment which was involved in both engagements and had lost many men at Gate Pa.
On 24 July, 133 Ngai-te-Rangi warriors surrendered to the British. By 29 August the entire tribe with the exception of one Hapu (Piri Rakau) had followed suit.[1] 50,000 acres (200 km2) of land was confiscated and 81 guns surrendered, although they still maintained a number of firearms in their possession[2] The Government agreed to supply the Māori with food and seed until they got their crops re-established.
The Battle of Te Ranga, 21 June 1864 was the last serious engagement of the Tauranga campaign. Insofar as the Tauranga Campaign was a sideshow of the Waikato War it also marks the tacit end of that conflict.