Early Napier The Ahuriri area’s rivers, wetlands, lagoons and fertile land produced important resources, making the area an attractive place to live. Settlement is thought to have begun in the twelfth or thirteenth century and Ngāti Kahungunu became the dominant iwi from the sixteenth century. There were several pā at what became Port Ahuriri and Napier, including an island pā, Te Pakake, just west of Mataruahou island (Scinde Island, later Napier/Hospital/Bluff Hill), Pukemokimoki to the south and Hukarere on top of Mataruahou. As a result of inter-tribal warfare, around the 1830s many local Ngāti Kahungunu sought refuge in Māhia. When missionaries and other Europeans began arriving in earnest after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the exiles had returned and Te Koau, near Te Pakake, became the principal local pā. With the Ahuriri Purchase of 1851, the Crown acquired the lands between the Tutaekuri River and north to the Mohaka area, inclusive of Mataruahou and most of its surrounds. A few years later, in 1855, Napier was established by the government, with the town primarily located on the hill and around its base, as well as the narrow spits extending south and west. The site was not promising because road access was difficult and future expansion would be challenging. However, Napier had a port. This was an important factor in Napier becoming Hawke’s Bay’s early administrative, commercial, and social centre. The population rose steadily: 343 in 1858; to 3,514 in 1874; and 8,774 in 1901. Napier’s geography limited its growth, despite several reclamation projects, until the 1931 Hawke’s Bay Earthquake lifted the ground level by as much as 2.7 metres in some places. Flood-prone Hawke’s Bay The 1897 Flood Heroism Memorial is directly connected to the geographical history of the Hawke’s Bay. It also reflects the prevalence of drowning in New Zealand, both historically and to this day. It is a memorial to ten men who died on 16 April 1897 while attempting to rescue residents from the nearby settlement of Clive during a severe flood. Floods continue to be the ‘most frequent hazard in Hawke’s Bay’ as well as the ‘most frequent and costly natural disasters in New Zealand.’ The risk of flooding is high in the Hawke’s Bay because so much of the region’s land is low lying and settlement has occurred on river flood plains. There are a variety of factors that contribute to flooding in the Hawke’s Bay, including its climate (hot, dry periods followed by heavy rainfall), shallow soils, a lack of lake/wetland storage as a result of land reclamation in the area and the proximity of three major river mouths on the Heretaunga Plains. The Ngaruroro, Tukituki and Tutaekuri rivers discharge into the sea within approximately five kilometres of each other and certain wind, current and tidal conditions can cause water to back up in these rivers. This is particularly problematic during times of high rainfall. From as early as the 1860s, colonial settlers in the area were exploring the possibility of controlling rivers and preventing flooding. A network of stopbanks and protection systems now exists on both the Heretaunga and Ruataniwha Plains to reduce the effect of floods in the Hawke’s Bay. This has evolved over the last 130 years, with improvements informed by flooding events. Not long after colonial settlement in New Zealand, drowning became known as ‘the New Zealand death’ due to the high number of drownings each year. Rapidly rising rivers and the deceptively strong current of rivers in flood contributed to this. Even today, New Zealand has one of the highest fatal drowning rates amongst OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, with drowning being the third highest cause of accidental death. The 1897 flood On Thursday 15 and Friday 16 April 1897, heavy rain led to water covering three-fifths of the Heretaunga Plains. At one point, 11.5 inches (29.21 centimetres) of rain fell in just two and a half hours. To the south of Napier, the small settlement of Clive was in a particularly vulnerable position, being located between the mouths of the Ngaruroro and Tukituki Rivers. By Friday afternoon (Good Friday), the rain had subsided but nevertheless telegrams from Clive were received by the Chief Traffic Clerk in Napier advising the Ngaruroro River was rising rapidly and, finally, ‘For God’s sake send us some help.’ A number of boats from Napier went to rescue residents of Clive, and numerous successful rescues occurred. Two boats were transported by special train in the early evening of Good Friday to Waitangi, near the mouths of the Tutaekuri and Ngaruroro rivers. This was as close as the train could get, as the railway line further on had been washed away. It seems that soon after the boats were launched and the train returned to Napier, floodwaters from the Ngaruroro broke through the railway embankment at Waitangi causing a large washout. It was initially thought the two boats, each holding five men, had successfully departed for Clive before the washout occurred and further rescue boats were launched that night. The initial newspaper reporting of the flood made no mention of missing boats. However, by Sunday 18 April, it was confirmed the ten men from the two boats initially launched at Waitangi had not been seen in Clive at all and a search began. Oars from each boat were found amongst wreckage on Wairoa Beach. Later in April, the bodies of two of the men, John Rose and Henry Brierly, were found by a steam trawler. An inquest determined the two men had ‘accidentally drowned in a brave attempt to save the lives of others’ and no further inquest would be necessary if bodies of other the men were found. In early May two further bodies, those of Constable Alfred Stephenson and John Prebble, were washed ashore. No other bodies from the rescue party were found. All ten men were presumed to have been washed out to sea and drowned. They were identified as Arthur McCartney (licensee of the Albion Hotel), John Rose (a commercial traveller from Sydney), John Prebble (the son of a local fruitier), Constable Alfred Stephenson, Henry Brierly (a wheelwright), Frederick Cassin (an auction mart clerk), Herbert Oborn (an employee of the Napier branch of the department store Kirkcaldie and Stains), Sergeant Florence O’Donovan, George Chambers (a blacksmith) and Frederick Ansell (a carpenter). Six of the men had wives and children, while Sergeant O’Donovan left behind ‘four motherless children.’ At least two other people drowned as a result of the flooding and hundreds of families were left homeless. Heavy damage occurred throughout the region, including to Napier, Hastings and a number of Māori settlements, and farmers lost houses, fences and tens of thousands of sheep. Numerous washouts of the railway line, roads and bridges occurred, and communication systems were lost. On Easter Monday the Evening Post described what it called ‘An Awful Tale of Woe,’ with water covering the entire Hawke’s Bay countryside. It said the whole township of Clive was underwater, and in the lower parts of Clive ‘only the tops of a few houses are visible, and several have been washed away.’ The cost of the damage to the province was estimated at £150,000. The storm was not confined to the Hawke’s Bay; damage was recorded throughout the lower part of the North island, and the ship the Zuleika sank near Cape Palliser with the loss of 12 lives. A national disaster was declared, and relief funds were opened. The flood led to the formation of the Hawke's Bay River Board, who worked to develop the region’s network of flood protection systems, while the way in which the Tutaekuri River had spread silt over the plains showed engineers that the same process could be used to reclaim land in the area. A memorial to the heroes In February the following year, local businessman John Vigor Brown (who would later serve as the Mayor of Napier for a total of 18 years) suggested a memorial be erected to the ten men. He argued the heroic deeds of working men were just as deserving of recognition as those of soldiers, and started a public subscription. Others also contributed: a fundraising concert was given by the City Band and a large carnival held on the Recreation Ground with 3,500 people in attendance. A meeting of subscribers to the memorial was held, chaired by the Mayor of Napier George Henry Swan, who had himself been involved in the rescue effort and had arranged the two boats and crew to be taken to Clive. A proposal for the memorial to contain a drinking fountain and be placed ‘in a prominent position on the Parade’ in Napier was agreed to. A public invitation to architects, stonemasons and others to present designs for the memorial was made and eventually a design by David Frame was adopted. David Bruce Frame was an architect and civil engineer who spent most of his life in Napier. He designed a variety of buildings, sometimes in partnership with other notable architects such as the Abbott’s Building (1932) with James Augustus Louis Hay. Other buildings known to have been designed by Frame include the Category One listed Aramoana Station Homestead (1894), the Ancient Order of Foresters building (1919) and the former McCulloch Butler & Spence Building (1929). He also designed another significant Napier monument, the war memorial Cenotaph (List No.1113) located in Memorial Square and unveiled in November 1924. The base section of the memorial and the tapered obelisk were made from local crystalline limestone, originally supplied by the Napier Harbour Board. Each of the four sides had a protruding curved bowl, into which a metal lion’s head was set, with water running from the mouth of the lion. Plaques were set on the northern and southern side of the memorial naming the men who died and the events that occurred. The central section was made from Timaru bluestone, providing a darker contrast to the limestone above and below it. The construction of the memorial, supervised by Frame, met with ‘many vexations’ and delays, including the discovery that ‘the third section of the monument would not stand the carving which it is to carry, the stone chipping off in huge flakes.’ The memorial was finally unveiled on 26 September 1900 in front of a large crowd, with Mayor Swan, members of the committee, the Bishop of Waiapu and the Fire Police in attendance. Swan gave a detailed account of the events of 16 April 1897 that led to the men’s deaths. The base was decorated for the event with trees associated with death and mourning throughout the world. Within the base was sealed a ‘specially prepared glass bottle’ containing accounts of the flood and the fundraising effort. The Mayor’s wife turned on the water for the fountains, and the Mayor promised that the council would ensure the fountains were cared for and the water would be kept running in perpetuity free of charge. Very few monuments had been raised in New Zealand in the nineteenth century, even to ‘great men’ or as war memorials. Indeed, Napier residents thought their memorial was one of a kind – at the opening of the memorial the Mayor said ‘The monument is unique, the first of its kind erected in New Zealand’, meaning, probably, the first to be built in memory of people lost in disasters. However, he was not aware of two others – one being an obelisk built in Timaru in 1883-1885 in memory of those lost in two shipwrecks, and an obelisk erected over the graves of those who died in the 1896 Brunner Mine disaster in the same month as the Napier memorial. However, the 1897 Flood Heroism Memorial is likely the first public monument to commemorate deaths as a result of flooding. The only other known flood memorials commemorate flood levels in Queenstown and Kelso and deaths as a result of the 1938 Kōpuawhara flood. From the beginning of the twentieth century many more memorials were built; as historian Jock Phillips writes, they became in this era ‘a way for Pākehā to endow the landscape with its own history and embellish cities with statuary.’ Ongoing care for the memorial The following month the Mayor recommended fencing and planting around the memorial and a local woman offered to meet the costs. An image of the memorial after this shows young trees planted in garden beds added to the four corners of the memorial, protected by chains connected to decorative posts that also create a pathway to each of the drinking fountains. The memorial was to suffer significant damage during the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake on 3 February 1931 killed at least 256 and injured thousands more. Buildings in Napier and the nearby city of Hastings crumbled and fire quickly tore through Napier’s central business district. The damage was catastrophic. Images of the memorial in the years immediately after the earthquake show the top two-thirds of the column missing, while the rest of the memorial appears to remain relatively intact. Small hedges or shrubs have replaced the trees planted in the garden beds. In 1932 Leonard Bestall (1895-1959), an architect, draper and later the first director of the Hawke’s Bay Art Gallery and Museum, stated the Memorial was one of the city’s pre-earthquake treasures and advocated for its speedy restoration. Newspaper reports from March 1935 mention that the Napier City Council planned to repair the memorial, but the exact date of the repairs is not known. A service was held on 16 April 1997 at the memorial to commemorate the centenary of the ten men’s deaths. The service was led by the Dean of St John’s Cathedral and was attended by around 20 people, including the great-niece of one of the men who died. The surroundings of the memorial have seen many changes since its construction. Originally its address was described as being at the intersection of Marine Parade and Byron Street, but its backdrop is now a hotel, since in 2001 the northern end of Byron Street was permanently closed. The memorial was incorporated into the footpath of Marine Parade. At this time, archaeological work found several early Māori fireplaces close to the memorial. At some point the fencing and planting were removed and it is no longer operational as a drinking fountain.

Current Description The 1897 Flood Heroism Memorial is located on the western footpath at the northern end of Marine Parade in Napier. Its 11-metre height and Gothic Revival-influenced masonry mark it out as an imposing figure in the seaside urban landscape, particularly when viewed in the context of the more contemporary architecture surrounding it. The memorial is a four-sided square column that tapers to a point. Each of the four sides has four concrete steps leading to the 5.8 metre base of the memorial, originally designed to provide access to the four drinking fountains set into the monument. The first section of the memorial is made from local crystalline limestone, originally supplied by the Napier Harbour Board. Each side has a protruding curved bowl beneath a pointed arch into which a small metal sculpture of a lion’s head is set, with water previously running from the mouth of the lion to form the drinking fountain. The lion sculpture is missing on the southern side of the memorial. Iron eyelet hooks protrude from the four corners of each side of the base; these were added after the construction of the monument to attach chain link fencing which has since been removed. One of the eyelet hooks is missing on the northern side of the memorial. At the top of the pointed arch is a circular form, and above that is a marble plaque set into the limestone. The plaques on the northern and southern sides of the memorial read: ‘This Monument / Was Erected / By The People Of Napier / To Commemorate / A Deed of Heroism / By Which Ten Men Lost Their Lives / On Good Friday 16th April 1897. / In Attempting To Rescue The / Flooded Out Settlers Of Clive.’ While the plaques on the eastern and western sides record the names of the deceased men and read: ‘Arthur McCartney. / Frederick Cassin. John Rose. / Herbert G. Orborn. John Prebble. / Florence O’Donovan. Alfred Stephenson. / George Chambers. Henry Brierly. / Frederick James Ansell. / Greater Love Hath No Man Than This, That A Man / Lay Down His Life For His Friends.’ The quote following the names of the men is John 15:13 from the King James Bible. The central section of the memorial is made from Timaru bluestone, providing a darker contrast to the limestone above and below it. The bluestone is carved on each side with a pointed arch that has a circular form at its tip. Within the arch are circular and triangular forms, with a shield shape at the centre. The upper tapered section, an obelisk which forms half of the total height of the memorial, is made from crystalline limestone like the base. Each horizontal row of limestone blocks alternates between a smooth and rough finish, up to the final smooth section that tapers into a four-sided triangular point. It is one of a number of memorial structures along Marine Parade, including the 1917 Swan Memorial Pool Shelter (List No. 1165), located almost directly opposite. Others include the 1906 South African War Memorial (List No. 1111), 1933 Kirk Sundial, 1934 Veronica Sunbay, 1937 Colonnade, 1947 Percy Spiller Memorial, 1982 Swan Memorial Lamp, 1993 Reflecting Ball, 1999 HMNZS Tui Anchor and the 2000 Millennial Arch. While the Memorial falls just outside the Napier City Centre Historic Area (List No. 7022), it is part of an area that includes other survivors of the 1931 earthquake, such as the Napier Soldiers’ Club (Former) (List No. 9967), the Borough Council Chambers (Former) (List No. 2794) and the Hawke’s Bay Club (List No. 180).