A unique piece of New Zealand surf lifesaving history has been recovered from under a hedge at Port Chalmers in Otago and restored as a display item at Dunedin’s St Clair Surf Lifesaving Club, nearly 70 years after it was designed and built to help the country’s volunteer lifeguards keep their beaches safe.

Duke II

Duke II was believed to be the first fibreglass surf rescue canoe made in New Zealand and soon after it was hand made in a Dunedin garage about 1955, many more of the same design were built and they became an essential piece of lifesaving gear in most surf lifesaving clubs throughout the country.

The 5.8 metre canoe was designed by legendary St Clair lifeguard, the late Duke Gillies. Although it was thought to be the first fibreglass surf canoe made in the country, before the 1950s other similar but far less durable craft were made from wooden frames covered with treated canvas but they lacked the durability and sea-keeping ability of Duke II.

Duke II is believed to be the only original canoe from the early days of fibreglass surf canoes still in existence in New Zealand.

The double-ended canoe had no steering gear and was paddled by four lifeguards, sitting side by side, two in the front section and two in the back. The two back paddlers steered by holding a paddle in the water at the stern. The bow and the stern sections were both watertight and another watertight section was built into the middle of the canoe.

Graeme Newton, a St Clair Surf Lifesaving Club life member and the instigator of the restoration of the ‘banana shaped’ canoe, said when it was built about 1955, there were no fibreglass moulds and it was laid up by hand using fibreglass and epoxy resin as probably New Zealand’s first fibreglass surf canoe. When it was built at least a decade before New Zealand switched to decimal currency in 1967, it cost the four club members who built it

172 (about $344).

“It was an ideal rescue boat designed for New Zealand conditions where the surf is often quite powerful. It could get out through fairly large waves and with a patient in the back it was relatively easy to guide it back to the beach on a large wave, provided the crew members knew what they were doing,” he said.

Other clubs throughout the country quickly built identical canoes and for many years they were important pieces of rescue equipment. He said many people owe their lives to the lifeguards who paddled the canoes out to rescue swimmers in trouble, or to check the surf to know where to place the patrol flags for the safest swimming.

The canoe was first owned by the four lifeguards who built it, Duke Gillies, Gordon Reid, Ian Denny and Allan (Lofty) Swale. It served at the St Clair Club for at least 10 years until it was replaced by a new fibreglass canoe of a similar design but professionally built in a factory.

When the new, replacement surf rescue canoe was commissioned in the mid 1960s, Duke II had its pointed stern cut off and replaced by a square stern which could take an outboard motor. It was then used for regular fishing trips to White Island, about two and a half kilometres off St Clair Beach.

In the restoration the pointed stern, which was also found under the Port Chalmers hedge with the rest of the canoe, was put back on. The wooden gunwale strips and decks had partially rotted and were replaced but the wooden runners stretching the entire length of the canoe hull were in good condition and are still original.

Brittle and damaged fibreglass was restored and the canoe was repainted. An original wooden paddle from 1955 may be included in the display at the entrance to the St Clair clubhouse in Victoria Road.

The canoe is unlikely to be used in the surf again because of its historic importance and will be displayed in a glass showcase at the club on the St Clair Esplanade.

Duke II in glass case

“Fibreglass can become quite brittle the older it gets and in the years after Duke II was built, quite a few around the country were damaged or destroyed by large waves. This canoe is too important historically to put it at risk by taking it into the surf again,” Mr Newton said.

He said almost 70 years ago when Duke II was built, it was the forerunner for the canoes which become one of the key elements of efficient surf lifesaving patrols throughout the country.

“With a competent crew they could negotiate heavy surf both going out and coming back in and carrying a patient, usually in the rear section, often made them more stable.

“Lifeguards could take them out on training runs and learn far more about how waves worked than they could by studying the surf from the beach. They learnt when and where to negotiate heavy surf with rips and currents on the way out, how to ride the waves, when to let some waves go, or when and where to catch them on the way in, and that is all extremely useful knowledge and experience for a lifeguard to have,” he said.

“These canoes were about as basic as you could get but when they were built in the 1950s people were becoming far more adventurous in the surf and rescues often stretched the limit of lifeguards who would have to swim out wearing a surf belt attached to a long surf line on a reel on the beach, or swim out without the belt and line to bring patients back to the safety of the beach,” he said.

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