The new equipment consisted of some sort of motive power, a vacuum pump, a milking set anda cream separator. Steam engines required a steam ticket and rigorous safety requirements. An electric motor was the dream, but in many regions electricity supply did not extend beyond the cities until well into the 1940s.
The new stationary internal combustion engine was absolutely ideal for providing motive power and could be run by children. It was expensive to purchase but inexpensive to maintain and operate.
The first engines successfully marketed for these purposes were built in France, the outstanding example being the de Dion which had a multitude of applications, powering small cars, motorcycles and tricycles, boats and electric generators, for example. In 1909, at age 14, my father left his father’s livery stable business and ran off for the glamour of running a de Dion single-cylinder engine for an itinerant Northland motion picture exhibitor. The little engine was coupled to a dynamo powering the arc lights for the projector and cooled by water from a canvas tank.
The technology involved in these early engines was straightforward and the means of producing the engines in New Zealand were abundant. New Zealand already had highly developed engineering facilities which could completely manufacture steam plants for powering trains, ships and stationary plants in the sawmilling and mining industries.
Parallel to the development of stationary engines for farm use was their adaptation for use as marine engines. Not only were light petrol engines ideal for farm use and powering electricity generators but also they came to make a huge impact on the fishing industry where little marine engines, as auxiliary power, extended the utility of the centreboard mullet boat and keel boat types used for netting and line fishing.
From around 1900 there was a growing influx of imports of marine engines from the US and Britain. The US imports were subject not only to freight costs but also tariffs. In the low-horsepower range many of these American engines were simple two-strokes. The British imports were duty free under Empire Preference rules and had an edge because of the much lower wages paid to workers in Britain than here. Nevertheless, there was still a viable business model for manufacturing marine engines in New Zealand and many makes were marketed.
The most notable of the early examples were the Zealandia, Twigg and Kapai from Auckland, the Orion and Viking from Dunedin, and the Anderson from Christchurch. Essentially, pressures in these engines were so low that well-understood steam engine technology was more than adequate for their design, for patterns to be made, to be cast and machined, and for moving parts to be fabricated and machined.
The Zealandia range of marine engines was probably the most prolific. They were built in Auckland in a large tin shed at the corner of Stanley Street and Beach Road from 1903, starting with just two men and a boy. The people behind the enterprise were three engineers, two Danish brothers, Charles and Edward Hoiland, and Aucklander John Arkell Gillett trading as ‘Hoiland Bros & Gillett’. They also had a wide range of engineering activities including repairing and selling early motorcars, trucks and busses. Within three and a half years the staff was up to 30 and they were turning out three engines a week. That output increased considerably as the years went on. At the outset the company had the local agency for Gardner engines and used a big Gardner engine to drive the shafts and belts of the works.
The Zealandia works put out a wide range of four-stroke engines in 12hp ratings from a 3hp automatic inlet valve single-cylinder to a four-cylinder side-valve 40hp. Two 10hp engines on a common crankcase made a 20hp, three made a 30hp etc. (see Sidebar). They offered a two-year guarantee, four times the usual for the period. The entire engine, ignition and carburetion equipment, the propeller shafting, clutch and epicyclic reversing gear, if fitted, was built on site. The contemporary literature is coy about the castings. I am almost certain that foundry work was outsourced to the Masefield and Seagar foundries in Freeman’s Bay but the machining of castings, gear grinding and heat-treating were all done at Stanley Street.
At the turn of the 20th Century the manner in which yachts were commissioned was governed by the identity of the boatbuilders, their reputation, their workmanship, their price. When motor launches arrived on the scene with a bang around 1903 the dynamic began to change. Apart from the low horsepower auxiliary engines or ‘kickers’, the cost of the engine in the size capable of propelling say a 30ft launch to eight knots was close or even greater than the cost of the hull and its outfitting. As a result, there was a growing trend for commissions to be made direct to the agent for the marine engine who then placed the build for the hull to a boatbuilder. Often the launch bore the name of the engine as promotion.
Some major boatbuilders had their own engine agencies; Logan Bros had the American-built Union, Charles Bailey Jr had the Loew Victor and later the Christchurch-built Anderson, Bailey & Lowe had the Sterling, T. M. Lane & Sons had the Scripps, and Collings & Bell the Doman. Hoiland & Gillett had two promotional 26ft fast launches, Zealandia (June 1905) and Zealandia II (1910) built by Lanes. The first of these went to Charles Hoiland’s farm at Tangaihi on the Kaipara but came back to the Waitemata in late 1906.
From 1909 Hoiland & Gillett made arrangements with Tom Le Huquet of Devonport to build substantial 35ft double-enders in the high style of the Logan Bros. Le Huquet built three very similar launches fitted with three-cylinder 18hp Zealandia engines, another Zealandia for Gillett, soon sold and renamed Doris M, Roma for J. P. Howden, Commodore of the N.Z. Power Boat Association, and a replacement Zealandia for Gillett. Other launches named Zealandia, for their engine, were built in Nelson in 1906, in Rotorua by Robinson & McIntosh in 1909, in Dunedin in 1910 and in Riwaka by Arthur McNabb in 1912.
The greatest volume of engines was in small horsepower single-cylinder Zealandias which were fitted to small launches and to fishing mullet and keel boats based in Auckland, Northland and Tauranga as auxiliaries. The twins and triples were fitted to bigger launches such as Mercedes (1909), Hauraki, Jersey Lily and Isla (1910), Speedwell II and Uenuku (1912) and a 40hp four-cylinder to the Kaipara trading schooner Breta Tui (1910). As an auxiliary for a yacht, a 3hp Zealandia was perfect. Muritai (ex Romp) had one fitted in Wellington in 1911. Also in 1911, Ted Bailey built the 30ft keel yacht Wylo, designed from scratch as an auxiliary by Prof. R.J. Scott and fitted with a 5hp Zealandia.
By the outbreak of war in 1914 Zealandia orders were tailing off under the pressure of mass-produced, lighter, more sophisticated engines being imported mainly from the US. Apart from the Christchurch Anderson and the post-WW1 Auckland Masport, the initial brood of New Zealand built marine engines had become dinosaurs. They disappeared under work benches and as mooring blocks and were replaced by the new breed of overseas high compression engines with more efficient valve gear and a vastly improved weight/horsepower ratio. They turned at much higher rpm, but needed a reduction gearbox.
The last big Zealandia I know of in service was the 20hp fitted to George Hodgson’s T.P. II at Russell in 1944 but many of the singles soldiered on for many years later. I recall seeing a 3hp Zealandia on J. Grieves 24ft mullet boat Maru in 1950 when he scooped me out of the tide off the Sugar Works, but
I was in no state for mental accuracy.
Charles Hoiland left the partnership in July 1906 when the trading name became Hoiland & Gillett. By 1909 the business was reconstituted as Hoiland and Gillett Ltd. Later the company gained the valuable Buick and Hudson motorcar agencies, as well as Dort cars, operating from premises in 166 Albert Street. In December 1917 the company name was changed to Gillett Motors Ltd. There was a disastrous fire in March 1923 when the Albert Street building was burnt out and 62 cars destroyed. The company lost the Buick agency in 1926 when General Motors set up in New Zealand to market all their brands, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, Oakland, Vauxhall, Buick and Cadillac. In 1926 the company was bought out by Dominion Motors Ltd and became Auckland’s Hudson/Essex dealer.
