The Royal New Zealand Navy’s Torpedo Bay Navy Museum, on a bluff overlooking Waitemata Harbour at the east end of King Edward Parade in Devonport, and the country’s Maritime Museum, on the downtown Auckland Viaduct Harbor waterfront at Quay Street, lie a pleasant 20 minutes by frequent ferry boat and a short walk from one another. The west end of King Edward Parade abuts the gate of the Devonport Naval Base, the Royal New Zealand Navy’s home for nearly nine generations.
Between them, these two museums offer a good, one-day overview of the island nation’s rich history at sea.
Kiwis have been brilliant sailors since day one. The islands were settled 1,200 to 1,300 years ago by the ancestors of the Maori, bold navigators who arrived in oceangoing outrigger canoes during what most scholars believe was the last wave of original Pacific island settlement. In February 1840, their descendants and representatives of the British Crown signed the Treaty of Waitangi, establishing the condominium that still exists in the modern nation. New Zealand’s contemporary yachtsmen regularly compete above their weight class, often dominating international competitions. The Maritime Museum concentrates on both of these aspects of national seafaring history, with one of its five galleries crammed with full-scale voyaging canoes, a second with immigration exhibits, and a third featuring the many sailboat classes that underlie the nation’s extraordinary competitive prowess afloat.
The Navy Museum’s nearly one dozen exhibit halls and a neighboring boat shed tell that story well, too, especially in the rooms dedicated to “the Empire and World War I,” “World War II,” and two adjacent halls that recall the wars in Asia, the nuclear age, and the Royal New Zealand Navy in peacetime. That navy today musters barely 2,000 regular sailors and a dozen ships in commission. Its only aircraft, eight Kaman Seasprite helicopters, are carried on the books of the Royal New Zealand Navy’s No. 6 Squadron. A volunteer coast guard, funded almost entirely by contributions, rounds out the nation’s sea services
The Maritime Museum offers boat rides around Auckland’s beautiful harbor on some of its historic vessels. Both museums feature the usual gift shop and cafeteria, although the latter faces daunting competition from excellent local restaurants.
Tourists interested in the earthy aspects of New Zealand’s history will need to visit far-off Wellington’s Museum of New Zealand and also the same city’s excellent Dominion Museum at the National War Memorial. Both have superb exhibits describing, among other historical bits, the tragically ill-conceived amphibious landing at Gallipoli during World War I. From that slaughter of and sacrifice by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps emerged a sense of post-colonial nationality, as well as nearly 4,000 books in English and Turkish and more than two dozen movies about the dreadful campaign.
Torpedo Bay Navy Museum
64 King Edward Parade
Torpedo Bay
Devonport
Auckland, New Zealand
Open seven days a week
1000 to 1700
Admission is free
New Zealand Maritime Museum
Corner Quay and Hobson Streets
Viaduct Harbor
Auckland, New Zealand
Open seven days a week
1000 to 1700
Admission is free for Aucklanders; other visitors pay a fee:
Adults: NZ$20
Seniors/Students: NZ$17
Children: NZ$10
Family Pass: NZ$40
Mr. Jampoler, a retired naval aviator, is author of seven books from the Naval Institute Press. His eighth, Interesting Times, the American Navy, the Great War, and USS Tennessee, will be published by NIP in 2019.
