Divers working on replacing pontoon piles near the Edgewater Fan have located a cast iron propeller believed to date from the wreck of the Taranaki in November 1878.

The salvage crew's hopes of an unexpected windfall were dashed, however, when the propeller was found to be cast iron instead of $10 a kg bronze.

Colin Graham, aka Ratty, from HEB Structures, with the cast iron propeller.

Glencoe Marine Ltd director and tug Edward G skipper Ian Chalmers says the propeller was first discovered some years ago when they were digging out the berth for the former Devonport ferry Kestrel, which briefly operated at the southern end of the The Strand as a restaurant.

'We put it in the hopper of the barge and notified Mark Scapens, who owned the Kestrel, to tell him we had found it there,” says Ian.

'He was going to mount it by the gangway. To stop it rusting and deteriorating he asked us to drop it back in the water by the last pontoon.”

This time the heavy propeller was lifted out with the crane being used on the pontoons re-piling job. An easterly gale earlier this year broke wooden piles securing several of the pontoons.

The propeller used to be four-bladed, but one has been lost.

The only local shipwreck of any note that had two propellers of that size was the steamer Taranaki, says Ian.

'We thought that somebody had probably salvaged this propeller. But it was only cast iron so it wasn't worth anything and was just used as a mooring,” he adds.

There is still chain attached to the propeller.

'That ship was a twin screw - two propellers of about that size, it would be about right,” says Ian.

'I was told those propellers were salvaged by an old Tauranga diver called Charlie Merriman. Basically they salvaged the propellers and were highly annoyed that they weren't bronze or anything like that.”

He thinks they were brought ashore and sold off given away as mooring blocks.

The steamer Taranaki ran into Karewa Island soon after 9am on November 29, 1878. All passengers were taken off by lifeboat and landed on the island, which is basically a big rock.

Ian adds: 'They would have kept the ship steaming while everybody got off. It's then gone down and as the wreck hit the bottom it broke one of the blades off.”

'We don't know for sure, but it's the only logical explanation.”

The propeller is too big for any of the local fishing boats of the time, says Ian.

The ship was en-route to Timaru with about 75 passengers on board, including a large number of women and children. Twenty five of the passengers were steerage class in the fore cabin. There were about 34 crew making a total of 110 on board.

She was under the command of Captain J. Malcolm, and owned by the Union Steam Ship Company. An account of the wreck as published in the local newspaper the following day is here.

The report states passengers were ferried ashore by lifeboat, but confirms the engines were kept running after the ship struck the island. The ship struck about 9am and all passengers were ashore by 11am. They were picked up later by the steamer Staffa and taken to Tauranga.

The propeller is claimed by one of the salvage team and it will be transported to the Dargaville Boating Club.