Rangihoua Bay

Rangihoua Bay is a bay at the southern end of the Purerua Peninsula,[1] on the north-west shore of the Bay of Islands in Northland, New Zealand.[2] It is 10 km north across the Bay of Islands from Russell and 12 km north from Paihia. By road it is 32 km from Kerikeri.

Rangihoua Bay in 1964 at the time of the 150th anniversary of the first Christian service held there, where the Rev. R E Marsden (great-great-grandson of Samuel Marsden) conducted a commemorative service.

History

In the early 19th century, when European ships first began visiting the area, the Ngāpuhi chief Te Pahi had a pā at Rangihoua. After his death in 1810 he was succeeded as chief by Ruatara. It was the friendship of Te Pahi and Ruatara with Samuel Marsden that led Marsden to decide that Rangihoua would be the site of the first Christian mission in New Zealand. Prior to the establishment of the mission Ruatara had been the first to grow wheat in New Zealand, at Rangihoua in 1812.[2]

The missionaries, John King, Thomas Kendall, and William Hall, together with free settler Thomas Hansen, arrived in Rangihoua Bay on board the brig Active on 22 December 1814. The first Christian sermon on New Zealand land was preached by Marsden at Oihi Bay (a small cove in the north-east of Rangihoua Bay) on Christmas Day, 1814.[2][3][4][5]

On 24 February 1815 Marsden purchased land at Rangihoua for the first New Zealand mission.[2]

The death of Ruatara on 15 March 1815 and the loss of his protection for the mission may have contributed to a lack of growth of European settlement in the area and its subsequent displacement, in the 1820s, by the mission at Kerikeri as the senior mission in New Zealand. By the 1830s[6] the houses of the mission at Oihi had deteriorated considerably and the mission was moved to Te Puna, further to the west in Rangihoua Bay.[2][7][8] The mission finally closed in the 1850s.[8][1]

On 21 December 2014 the Rangihoua Heritage Park was opened to commemorate the bicentennial of the establishment of the mission.[9]

Rangihoua Bay and Oihi missionary settlement
Rangihoua pa viewed from Oihi

References
  1. "Rangihoua Historic Area". New Zealand Heritage List/Rārangi Kōrero. Heritage New Zealand. Retrieved 21 December 2009.
  2. Wises New Zealand Guide, 7th Edition, 1979. p.367.
  3. Marsden, Samuel. "The Marsden Collection". Marsden Online Archive. University of Otago. Retrieved 18 May 2015.
  4. Troughton, Geoffrey, ed. (2017). Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, Conflict and Peacemaking in New Zealand, 1814–1845. Wellington : Victoria University Press. ISBN 9781776561643.
  5. Newman, Keith (2010). Bible & treaty : missionaries among the Māori : a new perspective. North Shore [City] N.Z.: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-320408-4. OCLC 655641724.
  6. Wises says 1837, New Zealand Historic Places says 1832
  7. Wises New Zealand Guide, 7th Edition, 1979. p.308.
  8. Middleton, Angela (2008). Te Puna - A New Zealand Mission Station: Historical Archaeology in New Zealand. Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-77620-0.
  9. Rangihoua Herutage Park

35°10′30″S 174°05′30″E

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