Rangatira's wandering bell comes home

BOLD AS BRASS: Ross Auld with the bell that he sawed off the Rangatira while it was docked in a British port in 1985.

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Twenty-four years after being spirited off the Rangatira while it was docked in Britain, the bell of the former Wellington ferry is to return home.

Its voyage has seen it secreted in a port, hung in British pubs and rung in a Scottish home. Now its "liberator" and "caretaker", former Wellington wharf policeman Ross Auld, has flown it back to New Zealand to donate it to the Museum of Wellington City and Sea.

Mr Auld, 54, who lives in the Bay of Islands between international diving contracts, acquired the bell from the Rangatira one night in 1985 at Falmouth, in southwest England.

He had remembered the ship, which sailed between Wellington and Lyttelton under the flag of the Union Steamship Company in the 1970s, from his days as a member of Wellington's wharf police in 1976.

Mr Auld was working on a salvage ship out of Falmouth in 1985 when he was made aware of the Rangatira's presence.

"I was with two Kiwi mates. When we came back in to port [Willie Bullock] said to me, 'There's the old Rangatira over there'.

"In the bars that night the locals told us the ship had been there for nine months and was up for sale.

"It had been down to the Falklands. My mates went on the boat the next day and had a look around. Willie came back and just happened to mention the Rangatira's bell was still on the boat."

Mr Auld boarded under cover of fog one night and hacksawed the 23-kilogram bell's fastenings from the ship's bow.

He wrapped it up and spirited it under the gangplank, where it lay for six months.

"One night my mates and I shifted the bell into the boot of our car. We souvenired it to ensure the bell returned to its true home in Wellington."

While in Mr Auld's care the bell had several homes. It spent 12 years in a pub in Essex before moving on to become the official pub bell in the Ship Inn in Johnshaven, Scotland.

"It hung there until about 2004. After that a mate looked after it for me in Aberdeen."

Mr Auld returned from London this week with the bell.

"It was the right time to bring it home. It's going to go to the Museum of Wellington City and Sea. It belongs to the people of Wellington. I'm coming down to Wellington to give it to the museum in the next couple of weeks."

SHIP WITH A HISTORY

From March 1972 until September 1976 Rangatira sailed between Wellington and Lyttelton under the flag of the Union Steamship Company (UK) Ltd.

On the evening of Friday, September 17, 1976, Rangatira sailed from Wellington Harbour for the last time bound for Falmouth in Britain.

It embarked on a new career as a charter vessel, culminating in 1982 with a two-year combat duty stint in the Falklands as a home away from home for British troops stationed at Stanley Harbour.

After two years in the Falklands, it returned to Falmouth in 1984 and was laid up for two years until sold to a Greek shipping company.

In 2005, after working as a ferry and cruise boat in the Mediterranean, it was beached at Aliaga in Turkey before eventually being scrapped.

- © Fairfax NZ News