Captain Charles and Agnes Hayward (née Lees)

Charles Hayward was a pioneer of coastal shipping and the harbourmaster of the Catlins River. He was born in 1833 at Bungay in Suffolk, England, where his father was a schoolmaster. Charles went to sea and by the time he was 23 was captain of a small vessel plying the Mediterranean. He also gained experience on whaling vessels before coming to New Zealand on the Royal Sovereign in about 1856.

By 1861 Hayward was busy sailing vessels along the southern coast, including to Port Molyneux. In 1863 he married Agnes Lees, who had arrived in the colony in 1860 on the Gala, and settled in the Catlins district. They were to have six sons and three daughters together.

In 1865 Captain Hayward transported the first sawmill to the Catlins in his schooner Nora. This began a lucrative period for the timber industry in the area and created a shipping boom to its dangerous port at the Catlins River mouth. Hayward was appointed harbourmaster there in 1872 and did sterling work controlling the traffic across the dangerous bar in the Catlins estuary. In 1882 he had a mooring post established at the mouth of the Owaka River to assist sailing ships to turn. The resulting ‘dolphin’ (mooring post) still stands today. Hayward was also remembered for his role assisting the passengers of the immigrant ship Surat when it was wrecked across the bay from his signal station on New Year’s Day 1873.

After his retirement as harbourmaster in 1887, Captain Hayward returned to the coastal trade, restoring the wreck of the Dauntless to become his cutter Bessie. In early December he was transporting a load of general stores from Dunedin to the Catlins when the boat was swamped by a rogue wave off Long Point. Captain Hayward and his son Frank were both drowned, as was a third crew member. Another son, Andrew, swam to shore and raised the alarm but it was too late. Even the most experienced seamen faced huge risks on the southern coast in the age of sail and Captain Hayward joined a long list of casualties from the many shipwrecks that littered the Otago shoreline.