By Colin Amodeo

 

Frank Amodeo was born in Trieste on 28 May, 1841, an Austrian by nationality, an Italian by birth, for the family had moved from the Bay of Sorrento earlier to escape the ferocity of the Bourbon Monarchy in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Frank Amodeo was a child when Cavour, Mazzini and Garibaldi were reshaping Italian politics and taking Italy out of the Austrian Empire. Trieste had become the major seaport for Austria and from here Frank Amodeo left his family to work as an apprentice seaman or cabin boy aged about 14 in some unknown ship. There is one family tradition which states that he was involved in smuggling and gunrunning. In the volatile Italy of the mid-1850s this could have been quite possible.

 

He reached the South Pacific probably as a seaman in an Australian-bound vessel. He was to describe himself as a miner when applying for his New Zealand naturalisation papers in 1869, so it may be that he spent some time on the Australian goldfields before arriving in Auckland in  the early 1860s, drawn perhaps by the lure of Coromandel gold. NZ records place him accurately from 1869. Living in Grahamstown (Thames) in 1869 he became a shareholder in the Bachelors Gold Mining Company at Waitohi Creek and then took up shares in Nolan’s Candlelight No.1 and the Excelsior Quartz Claim.

 

Enter Jane Lonergan, daughter of Thomas Lonergan who had arrived from Dublin in 1845 with the 58^th Regiment, fought in the battle  of Ruapekapeka and later took his discharge to become a tailor in downtown Auckland. In January 1850, in  the two year old St. Patricks Cathedral, Thomas Lonergan had married Margaret Lorigan, daughter of Daniel Lorigan who had emigrated to Auckland in the Westminster in 1843. On 2 March 1851 their eldest girl, Jane Mary Josephine was born.

 

Frank and Jane Amodeo were destined to become well-known Auckland identities- Jane for her work in social and church activities and Frank as a ship’s master. After their marriage at the Church of St. Francis de Sales on 17 May 1871 they would create a family that included ten boys and one girl, Janey Amodeo, later to become a well-known musician in Auckland and Hamilton. When Mrs. Amodeo died in 1893 she was to be sadly missed and the flags along the waterfront flew at halfmast as a mark of respect for her passing.

 

By 1875 Frank Amodeo had shares in the Gem Gold Mining and Young Gold Mining syndicates on the Tairua Field and from the profits he was able to find £950 to purchase the 60 ton light draught schooner Colonist. With himself in command he began loading Kawa Kawa coal for Auckland and Tairua timber for the Napier harbour works. The immigrant miner had become a respectable ship’s captain.

 

He had been helped. Captain Alexander McGregor, a tough-minded Nova Scotian, had set up a shipping business in Auckland about 1857. Between 1874 and 1876 Frank Amodeo had worked hard to gain his Colonial Home Trade and Foreign Masters Certificates from the New Zealand Marine Department. Although he still spoke a broken form of English when he became excited, he wrote with a good, fair hand and by the time he was master of the Colonist in 1885 he had also gained his Pilotage Exemption Certificates for Auckland and the northern way ports. Captain McGregor must have watched him and liked what he saw, for he arranged to have Frank Amodeo appointed Chief Officer under Captain Edward Stephenson in the McGregor steamer Argyle to further his experience. For about a year he sailed to East Coast runs, then in November 1876 McGregor helped him to his first trans-Tasman command.

 

Hector McQuarrie had launched his new brigantine Roderick Dhu in 1875 from his yard at Little Omaha.With Alexander McGregor’s help he was appointed master and in November 1876 he went into the Kaipara timber trade loading kauri at Te Kopuru and Aratapu for Lyttleton. Jones & Ware then chartered the Roderick Dhu to load stone at Melbourne for the Auckland Graving dock.

 

On her return from Port Philip with a dead weight of 104 tons of stone the Roderick Dhu nearly foundered as she laboured heavily through twenty days of Tasman gales but Frank Amodeo brought her finally into Waitemata and later, on 30 April 1877, the first stone of the Graving Dock was laid. Several weeks later Amodeo was given further experience by being brought into the McGregor Line of Steamers as Chief Officer in the S.S. Iona under Captain William Farquar. With his developing monopoly in the northern coastal runs and supported by a network of Auckland Scots syndicates McGregor’s shipping line was the one to work for. After some 18 months in the Iona Alexander McGregor arranged to give Frank Amodeo his first command in steam.

 

The Auckland Steam Ship Company required a master for their East Coast auxiliary steamer Pretty Jane and in August 1878 Amodeo took over the run from Auckland to Gisborne as a prelude to McGregor’s purchase of the Auckland Company’s assets and the real beginning of the McGregor Shipping empire. About a year later the Pretty Jane was sold to the Australasian Steam Navigation Company and Captain Amodeo, back as Chief Officer in the S.S.Iona was ready for the next step in his career.

 

In April 1879 Captain Daniel Sellars had brought out the new S.S. Glenelg from Glasgow to Auckland for the syndicate of Auckland businessmen headed by Alexander McGregor. Captain Amodeo was offered three shares in the Glenelg and, as McGregor had reshuffled his captains with the arrival  of the new vessel, Amodeo was appointed master of McGregor’s S.S.Rowena on the Gisborne run in December 1879.

 

The Rowena gave him some anxious moments among the black sou’easters of East Cape and the harbourless coastline down to Tuahine Point near Gisborne and McGregor, recognising her lack of power, re-scheduled the Rowena out of Onehunga to the West Coast way ports between Hokianga and Wanganui. In August 1880 Captain Amodeo was to face his first Marine Court of Enquiry after the Rowena stranded in the Waitara River but he was exonerated because the Waitara Harbourmaster had failed to inform himof the unsafe state of the bar.

 

As a result Captain Amodeo was made welcome as a McGregor supporter on 11 May 1881 whenn McGregor held an inaugural meeting of what was to become the Northern Steam Ship Company. In October that year Captain Amodeo would be given command of the newest vessel in the fleet - the S.S. MacGregor, a shallow-draught auxiliary steamer built for the West Coast bar harbours by McQuarrie & McCallum of Auckland. He would trade out of Onehunga for seven months before being transferred back to the Waitemata. There was good reason for this. His family was growing and he needed to be closer to his home in Nelson Street and, as he was gaing seniority in the company and a reputation as a popular master, McGregor put him on the Opotiki-Bay of Islands runs.

 

For the next 15 years Captain Amodeo was to command various well-known Northn Company vessels - notably the Glenelg, Argyle, and Iona. In December 1883 while in the Iona he joined the Glenelg, Argyle and Waitaki in trying to tow the large, stranded liner S.S. Triumph from the rocks below Tiri Tiri Matangi light. In May 1884, with his Foreign Master’s Certificate, Captain Amodeo was selected to take the Iona on a speculative voyage to Noumea via Norfolk Island. The Northern Company was making a bid against the Union Steam Ship Company to enter the lucrative island fruit trade. However, the Iona was really too small for strenuous ocean voyaging and lacked refrigeration. Captain Amodeo would in future remain on the New Zealand coast. There was also trouble brewing between the Seamen’s Union and the Northern Company and the Iona would by embroiled in it.    

 

In late October 1884 the Northern Company seamen and firemen struck over their wages claim and were arrested for disobeying a lawful order to return to work. The Auckland Magistrates Court bulged with men all pleading guilty to the same charge. The Iona sailed on her usual trips with a non-union crew and when the strike ended with the Northern Company agreeing to the men’s demands, McGregor withdrew the court proceedings and drew up new Articles. But the battle lines had been drawn and the Northern Company officers were becoming the meat in the political sandwich.

 

Captain Amodeo was transferred shortly afterwards to the Glenelg and on 29 January 1885 occurred the sort of incident that every ship’s master hopes to avoid. Five-year old George Sinclair drowned when, escaping from his mentors on the St.Pauls Sunday picnic to Motoihe Island, he climbed through the netting around the railing and fell overboard. The Glenelg’s boat was lowered away immediately  the boy’s disappearance was noticed and spent an hour in the search but the body was not found until a week later when fisherman John Kennedy recovered it from Rangitoto reef. At the hearing, the jury returned a verdict of accidental drowning but did not comment that the vessel was overcrowded with some 300 day trippers. The Glenelg’s officers can hardly be blamed for the tragedy.

 

In June 1885 Captain Amodeo transferred to the S.S. Argyle on the Mercury Bay-Great Barrier run. More problems with the Seaman’s Union were looming while the Dunedin-based Union Company vessels were beginning to challenge the Northern Company for the East and West Coast trade. By the end of May 1886 the Tarawera eruption suddenly required every available vessel in the Auckland region. On 12 June Captain Amodeo took the Argyle to Tauranga along with a mixed flotilla of other ships to evacuate livestock from the ash drowned areas around Rotorua. It was dangerous work. White Island was sending up fireballs and underwater rumblings were felt beneath the ships. Hot ash fell non their decks and rigging. Later, back in Auckland, the damage had to be repaired.

 

On the home front too, Jane Amodeo had been busy. St.Benedicts wooden church had been devastated by fire and in late 1886 her father, Thomas Lonergan, and the Amodeo family were actively involved in fundraising.

 

Throughout 1887 the Seamen’s Union conducted a running battle with the Northern Company. Alexander McGregor refused to pay his seamen more than £6 per month and would allow no overtime wages. Captain Amodeo, along with other Northern Company senior officers, was forced to sail under-manned with non-union crews and then the situation deteriorated further. Back in the Iona he watched as the Seamen’s Union set up their own opposition steamship service - the Jubilee Steam Ship Company running the S.S. Bellinger. For the next two years the Jubilee Line was to function, albeit on a shoestring for it had never been the Union’s intention to run the Northern Company out of business - only to show that they had other weapons besides strikes and court cases ton force McGregor and the Northern Company to accept union rules. One result of this was however that the Argyle was laid up in March 1888. Apart from the Jubilee Line competition, Auckland commerce had gone through four years of deepening recession and the Northern Company was feeling the pinch.

 

In May 1888 a motion was debated by the Northern Company Board on whether the company, which had been trading at a loss, should be wound up. The effect of this was that Alexander McGregor was replaced by Charlesn Ranson as Managing Director. The new man quickly resolved the problem with the Seaman’s Union the Jubilee Line was disbanded and the Northern Company  was put onto a new financial footing. Captain Amodeo seems to have got on well with Charles ranson and for the next nine years they would work closely together and see the Northern Company begin to prosper as the “lifeline of the north”. Amodeo of the Iona was to become something of a byword on the Great Barrier- Tauranga-Opotiki-Whangarei runs.

 

On 2 May 1889 the Iona cleared Auckland for Tryphena Harbour, discharged her cargo and sailed again into heavy swells and a strong gusting wind. Captain Amodeo kept in close to the land for shelter, steering for the northwest point but in deep water. The Iona grazed a sunken object about 400 metres offshore when she dropped down in a trough and Captain Amodeo stopped engines immediately, had the boat launched under the command of his second officer and after an investigation

was informed that there were two distinct rocks about 65 metres apart below the surface. The Iona was undamaged, except for the loss of a small portion of her pohutukawa forefoot, and steamed on. For some months the rock was referred to as “Iona Rock” but in 1890 a Marine Department survey charted the hazard and the New Zealand Pilot then described it as “Amodeo Rocks, Hauraki Gulf - Captain Amodeo (Iona) 1890.  

1890 was a troubled year. The great Maritime Strike spread from Sydney and Aucklanders were becoming panicky about their food supplies and factory production. By 6 September Northern Company officers were making a scratch crews from amongst their own ranks in order to get the company vessels to sea. The Iona returned the following day and Captain Amodeo was informed that she would be laid up. However she was back to sea within the month to Tauranga at the conclusion of the strike although the Northern Company had gained respect for the power of the Seamen’s Union and life would not be quite the same again aboard the company fleet. The Iona was laid up in August 1892 but Captain Amodeo and most of his crew were transferred to the Argyle on the Kuaotunu-Mercury Bay-Tairua run via Great Barrier.

 

Personal tragedy occurred when Jane Amodeo died of cancer in December 1893 and the Captain was faced with the problem of bringing up eleven children while he was at sea. His thoughts began to turn towards retirement. He had some good financial returns from the mines at Great Barrier and Kuaotunu but he would remain in the Argyle for a few more years. As a result, in 1894 his name would be placed on another part of the provincial map.  

 

Charles McCall had chartered the Argyle to tow a raft of pre-cut house timbers from Kuaotunu to a small unnamed bay on the western side of Coromandel Peninsula where he intended to build his farm. 

On 5 June 1894 the party landed and the raft was hauled up into the creek. Then the rain came down hard. A fresh in the creek washed the house timber away and it was lost. The Argyle, anchored offshore overnight, was informed of the disaster and Captain Amodeo rendered all possible assistance to the McCall family who were sheltering under canvas on the beach with their temporary cookhouse in the bush a few metres away. The bay was called “Amodeo Bay” in recognition of the Captain’s kindness and the New Zealand Geographic Board has retained the name ever since.

 

By 1895 Captain Amodeo had married again and in 1896 he decided to “swallow anchor” and settle down ashore. In mis-April 1897 he made a visit ‘home’ to Trieste to see the family he had left some 40 years earlier. Frank Amodeo would not return to New Zealand and there is no headstone to mark his passing. Returning to Auckland via Suez and Melbourne in the S.S.China he died from heat stroke in the Red Sea in September 1897. It being the height of summer, he was committed to the deep as befits a seaman. On the day that Auckland learned of his death the flags were flown at half-mast along the waterfront and a large crowd later attended his memorial service held in St. Patricks Cathedral.

 

Frank Amodeo was one of the pioneers of Auckland sea transport in the days when roads were few and of poor quality. Short, stocky, genial but with a fiery temper when crossed, he was one of the Northern Company’s popular skippers and a good example of an enterprising “foreigner” who had made a successful life in colonial Auckland.