You know the saying about going from a feast to a famine – well this is just the opposite. After not touching a model project all year I now have 4 builds on the go at once. Two are personal: the Maui (a 1971 17m Voith harbour tug) and the Tui, a 46ft steam river tug from 1880.
And now I have 2 commissions: the 15m Busby and the 11.5m Mahi.
While trying to track down some reference on the Mahi for a personal project I contacted the current owner. After seeing some photos of my Tika model he asked if I would be interested in making models of his two tug boats: the Busby and the Mahi, for him (photos 1 & 2). Well, I’ve got time on my hands and I like building tugs – so yeah, it’s a no brainer. Here we go!
I'll do the Busby first as I have a GA and hull lines – 1/32, display only. The Maui and Tui are back in the cupboard.
Busby and, identical sister ship, Marsden (photo 3) were built in Auckland for the Northland Harbour Board, and launched in 1963. They were designed by Burness Corlett & Co and built by Mason Bros in Auckland. 13.7m LOA, 23 tons gross, powered by two 300hp diesels with a 3.6 ton bollard pull. They were designed as line handling tugs for the supertankers calling at the then new oil refinery in Whangarei’s deepwater port. The tugs were named after Marsden Head and Busby Point which stand on opposite sides of the harbour entrance.
Burness Corlett were notoriously protective of their drawings, much the same as Damen and Allen are today. These two little tugs were standard 2 chine hulls and not 'Hydroconic' hulls which were patented by Burness Corlett so that may explain why there are still basic hull lines in existence. Sure makes my job easier. The whole 'Hydroconic' thing seems like a lot of smoke and mirrors now. There really wasn't anything startlingly unique about the hull design and I doubt that the patent would stand up to scrutiny these days.
Marsden and Busby were the smallest of the 6 Northland Harbour Board tugs. Parahaki and Raumanga at 39.4m/27 ton BP, and Herekino and Waitangi at 35m/22ton BP were all built by Brookes of Lowestoft in the UK. All 6 tugs were delivered in the early 1960s and at the time Whangarei had the most up to date fleet in the country. The Parahaki and Raumanga also served as rescue tugs for the top of the North Island and up into the Pacific. They are big bruisers but dated looking even when they were new. I quite like the look of them and built a 1/50 Parahaki a couple of years ago. (photos 4-7)
Parahaki and Raumanga were found to be underpowered and not as manoeuvrable as they needed to be and were eventually replaced. Marsden and Busby were also soon surplus to requirements and sold off.
Busby went to Auckland to work on the Manukau Harbour. Unfortunately she was smaller and less powerful than the Ports of Auckland tug (Manukau) she replaced and was ‘the right tug in the wrong place’. She certainly wasn’t meant to be handling ships up to 6500 tons on her own. This was borne out in 2001, when she couldn’t single-handedly pull the ‘Spirit Of Enterprise’ off the Motukaraka Bank after the ship had grounded.
Ports of Auckland didn’t waste time waiting for the inquiry’s final report, within three months, Busby was back on light duty in the adjacent Waitemata Harbour, carrying out tasks better suited to her size. She was eventually sold off in to private hands and has been through several owners. She is now with STF Marine and does general inshore/harbour duties around the Auckland region, everything from barge work to towing a dead whale of a beach.
She’s still in pretty good nick and I was able to get onboard recently and get a stack of good reference photos.