Heritage Talk - Opua Shipping

Talk date: 27 October 2022.

Nancy Greenfield presented a maritime history of the port of Opua, illustrated with many of her shipping photographs.

As a young girl, moving from her family farm on the Waikare Inlet to Opua in the 1950s, Nancy became fascinated by the ships docking at the newly rebuilt wharf. What started as 13-year-old’s photographic hobby with a box brownie camera and with the assistance of her sister Myra Larcombe, became an invaluable record of more than 400 ships, thousands of sailors and a vanished era of maritime history. 

Picture shows a passenger ship at Opua wharf in 1990.

Picture above of the Federal Steam Navigation Company ship, Suffolk

The Suffolk was the first ship to berth at the rebuilt Opua wharf on 9 November 1957. Edmund Lane's launch, 'Owaka' is ready to assist the lines boat. Nancy could hear the ship coming up the Veronica Channel with loudspeakers blaring the song 'Sussex by the Sea'.

About Nancy Greenfield

Nancy (nee Lane), was born and bred in the Bay of Islands, on a farm in the Waikare Inlet where transport was mainly by boat to Opua. Her father, Edmund Lane, founder of the Bay of Islands Cream Trip, was very involved with the port at Opua before and after World War 2. In 1950 the family moved to Opua township, into a house overlooking the wharf. The port's redevelopment and reopening with the arrival of the 'Suffolk' in 1959 stimulated Nancy to keep a record of the ships that berthed there. The rest is history.