AN INSIGHT INTO NZ’S UNIQUE MARINE ENGINES – Part Three

Todays WW story follows on from earlier stories – link below to Part One and Two 
As per pervious stories in the series the content has been pulled together by Ken Ricketts and ‘polished’ byPatrica and Ken’s daughter Corinne Pettersen. As always we have endeavoured to be as factual as possible but there will always by matters others will either know more about or be able to correct errors – so woodys do not hold back on commenting.

PART ONE – https://waitematawoodys.com/2025/04/04/an-insight-into-nzs-unique-marine-engines-part-one/

PART TWO – https://waitematawoodys.com/2025/04/12/an-insight-into-nzs-unique-marine-engines-part-two/

ROLLS ROYCE MARINE DIESEL ENGINES

ROLLS ROYCE 275 HP MARINE DIESEL ENGINE

ONE OF THE 2 ROLLS ROYCES THE ORIGINAL ENGINES IN OHORERE

KUDU WITH HER 137 HP ROLLS ROYCE ENGINES IN 1966

OHORERE WHEN NEW, WITH HER 2 X ROLLS ROYCE 6CYL. 275 HP DIESEL ENGINES

OHORERE AS AT 2025 WITH HER 2 X 770 HP MTU MARINISED MERCEDES BENZ DIESELS

MANAIA, WITH HER 2 X 6 CYL. 275 HP ROLLS ROYCE ENGINES

MANAIA INSTRUMENT PANEL

These are, as one would expect, a brand of engine that is quite rare, resulting from the cost of the engines to buy and the cost, equally, of parts for all maintenance. Also, while Rolls Royce has the name synonymous with perfection in all respects, it is my view that, in fact, Gardner engines are far superior in every respect, including noise, smooth running, longevity, maintenance necessity, and costs thereof. However, there are a few that are in the boats of today and yesterday. I personally know only three.

There is the KUDU, a large launch that, at one time, in mid to late 1966 to perhaps somewhere around the 1980s, belonged to the late Harry Julian. She is 63 feet long and powered by 2 x 137hp Rolls Royce 6-cylinder diesel engines. She was designed and built under Lloyd’s supervision in the UK in 1964 and sailed out to NZ as the end of a 20,000 km journey. However, the last time I saw her was on a visit to the Gold Coast in Australia, anchored in the middle of the center of Sanctuary Cove Marina.

Another of the RR-powered boats is the OHORERE, built by Percy Vos in Auckland for the government of the day to be a high-speed fisheries patrol craft, and designed by Thornycroft in the UK. However, she never reached anything close to her anticipated speed projections as required in the order from the government to the designers and builders. Large sums of money were spent collectively by the designers, Rolls Royce, and the builders to give her better performance, but they failed miserably, and she was ultimately sold to private ownership, where she has been used for many years now for fishing charters in Tauranga. As of now, Rolls Royce’s were replaced about two years ago with 2 x 770hp MTU marinized Mercedes Benz diesels and is capable of around 30 knots.

There is one more pleasure craft, an ex-Whangarei pilot boat and that is the MANAIA, which has had from new, 2 x Rolls Royce 8-cylinder inline 16-litre diesels. 

UNIVERSAL BLUE JACKET 6 FLAT HEAD PETROL ENGINES.

THE UNIVERSAL RANGE OF 4 & 6 CYL BLUE JACKET RANGE OF MARINE ENGINES

OTAZEL WITH HER UNIVERSAL BLUE JACKET 6 PETROL MARINE ENGINE. MANSION HOUSE BAY, KAWAU ISLAND c.1951

I am aware of one of these in New Zealand, which was in the OTAZEL, owned by Arch Tucket, in the late 1940s to the 1960s. He was the head of the patrol craft section for T.E.A.L. at that time in Mechanics Bay, and he fitted it to her on the hardstand at Okahu Bay in the winter of 1950.

G.M. ALLISON 1450HP, HOME MARINE CONVERTED, V12 AIRCRAFT PETROL ENGINE.

GM ALLISON V12 AIRCAFT ENGINE

REDHEAD, IN THE SOUTHWARD TRUST VEHICLE  MUSEUM IN PARAPARAUMU, AS SHE WAS LIFTED FROM THE SEABED IN WELLINGTON HARBOUR, AFTER HER  PROPELLER LOSING A BLADE, WHILST RACING & SINKING AS A RESULT.  

REDHEAD RACING A FLYNG BOAT ON WELLINGTON HARBOUR

The only boat I’m aware of that had one of these was Sir Len Southard’s champion racing boat, REDHEAD, which won, at one time or another, most of the cups and awards, as well as a huge number of races in her time. She was a real champion, designed, built, and raced by the late Sir Len Southward of Wellington, a brilliant engineer and philanthropist. John Bullivant tells has advised there was a second high-speed hydroplane racing boat built with a marine-converted V12 GM Allison petrol engine in the same era.

STERLING MARINE PETROL ENGINES

STERLING 6 CYL 1920 MARINE PETROL ENGINE PROBABLY SIMILAR TO THAT 

IN LADY STIRLING

STERLING 115 HP U.S. NAVY WWII FLAT HAD PETROL ENGINE

KERMATH 1928  225 HP SEA WOLF ENGINE IDENTICAL TO THAT IN THE TASMAN IN 1947

LADY STERLING IN QUEESNTOWN

TASMAN IN 1948 IN SCHOOLHOUSE BAY KAWAU ISLAND  

STERLING BUILT IN 1926 BY ERNIE LANE IN PICTON

LADY STERLING

The 52-foot, 105-year-old Bailey & Lowe-built ocean-going yacht, built in 1920 is named LADY STERLING. This yacht had one of these engines originally, and there were other boats that had them in the earlyish 1900s. 

LADY STERLING has, in recent times, been in the Queenstown area, but she has traveled many thousands of sea miles, with numerous crossings of the Pacific Ocean in her long life. 

Around the end of WWII, she belonged to Stan Waters. She passed shortly after to Lloyd McIvor, a dentist, who sailed her several times a year to Fiji and other Pacific islands to attend to the islanders’ dental issues.

TASMAN WITH A STERLING 6CYL DUAL IGNITION 115HP WWII U.S. NAVY PETROL ENGINE.

A reference in part 1 of this series was made in the comments section by Denis O’Callahan, related to the TASMAN having had a WWII ex-US Navy 6-cylinder flathead Sterling petrol engine at some stage, pre-1975. I have researched this engine and found the following information and images related to it, which I am confident may well be the engine he was referring to.

A quote from Tom Ball in 2016: “I have acquired this engine recently. It is a six-cylinder marine engine with dual ignition. It is 115 HP with a water-cooled exhaust. These Sterling petrol engines were made in Buffalo, New York. The engine supposedly was in a naval ship of some sort and may have come from the naval yard there.” – unquote

As I also said in part 1, I was aboard TASMAN, Christmas 1947 with my father one day & owner, Jack Brooke, lifted the bridgedeck floor & showed us her huge bottle green 225 hp overhead valve Kermath Sea Wolf  petrol engine, identical to that in the above image.

I could see by its size & overall concept, it was a fairly old engine, & perhaps the original, & in the circumstances, I have taken what to me, is a logical view, that this engine was probably replaced around 1960ish by the Sterling, due to old age , &/or perhaps maintenance issues, as well as huge quantities of petrol it must have consumed. Also, it was usually pushed at high speed most of the time by Jack B who was a speed fiend, when it came to his boat, which must have given the engine a hard life.  

19-04-2025 INPUT ex RUSSELL WARD – “I have a little input into Tasman when she had the Stirling engine in the early -mid ’60s. We used to describe it as a “Sterling Dolphin” in the day. My mother had a business connection with her then owner Dr Jim Sprott and I had the chance to see over Tasman and especially to view her engine. It was a four cylinder T head type engine -two blocks of two and quite tall. Certainly painted green with lots of brass -It ran delightfully smoothly and the owner averred that it was not too thirsty if throttled back. His suggestion was that the Americans installed the engine during the war to get more speed out of her. It certainly was a very old vintage- looking engine and had none of the looks of the more modern engines.

Dr Sprott later decided to replace it because of the petrol it used and maintenance. It was offered to MoTat who refused and my father wouldn’t allow me to have it and the word was that it was scrapped. RIP.”

26-04-2025 INPUT ex DENIS O’CALLAHAN – below further information regarding the Sterling engine in the launch – TASMAN

In 1970, TASMAN was purchased from Dr.Jim Sprott by my friend Allan Tyler and his dad Eric.

She had a Sterling 6 cylinder petrol engine with dual ignition and we were told that the original engine may have been a Kermath.

We had many adventures with this engine. One time at Tryphena she would not start and we found the Bendix Spring was broken. To our relief we found several spare springs in the locker so it must have happened before.

The Sterling was replaced in 1976 with a Lees Marine 6 cylinder Ford diesel. New stainless steel fuel tanks amidships replaced the old copper tanks under the aft deck which became the water tanks. The old Sterling engine went to scrap but we retained the name plates which were passed on to the new owner of TASMAN, Stephen Cashmore.

Photographs of these plates are below and the following is my interpretation:

Silver badge “Sterling”. THE ENGINE OF REFINEMENT FOR THE FINEST BOATS THAT FLOAT.

Small Plate. US NAVY. BU. ENG. NO. (Bureau of Engines Number) –  11725

Large Plate. STERLING ENGINE CO.

                        BUFFALO NY USA

            BUILDERS OF MARINE ENGINES

                       SERIAL NUMBER

                            US L61678

           ROTATION AT FLYWHEEL C.C. (Counter clockwise)

         C.W. HAND SCREW PROPELLER

                 HORSE POWER 220

                RPM MAXIMUM 2200

        WITH PROPELLER LOAD AND

            FULL OPEN THROTTLE

     ENGINE REVOLUTIONS MUST

     EQUAL OR EXCEED 1900 RPM

               FIRING ORDER

                 1 4 2 6 3 5

          TAPPET CLEARANCE

           INLET 020 THOUSANDTHS

    EXHAUST 025 THOUSANDTHS

In 2019 I visited Buffalo New York on a cruise through the Erie Canal and Great Lakes and looked for the old Sterling works.

I found that Sterling had been taken over by Phillips Petroleum in the late 1950s and the assets moved to Kansas.

The Sterling Company dates back to about 1903 and many speed records were held by boats with Sterling engines.

STERLING TEE HEAD 4 CYL PETROL MARINE ENGINE SIMILAR TO THAT AS DESCRIBED BY RUSSELL WARD ABOVE THAT HE COMMENTS WAS INSTALLED IN TASMAN IN THE 1960’S AFTER HER ORIGINAL KERMATH SEAWOLF

THE LAUNCH STERLING

I have researched extensively but have been unable to source an image of the 3-cylinder, 27 HP Sterling engine, as referred to below by Harold Kidd and in the launch STERLING as pictured above.  

Input from Harold Kidd: This STERLING was built by Ernie Lane in Picton in 1925 for L.J. Steele as a passenger vessel to carry 60 passengers and had a 1924-built, 3-cylinder, 27 HP (rated) Sterling marine engine with a bore of 4.5″ and a stroke of 5.5″. Dimensions are 34′ x 9′ x 3’9″.

HALL SCOTT DEFENDER V12 PETROL 630HP MARINE ENGINES

NGAROMA WITH HER 1 HALL SCOTT DEFENDER V12 PETROL ENGINE, & 1 GLENIFFER 8 CYL INLINE DIESEL ENGINE, WHEN OWNED BY JIM LAWLER

These Hall Scott Defender petrol engines were used in all Fairmiles during WWII wartime service. When sold into private ownership after the war, all were immediately replaced by diesel engines of various types, brands, and sizes, except for one privately owned Fairmile called the NGAROMA, owned at that time by Jim Lawler. This vessel retained one Hall Scott engine for around two years before replacing it with a second, opposite-handed, 8-cylinder inline Gleniffer Diesel to match the existing Gleniffer 8-cylinder engine he fitted when he purchased the NGAROMA, creating a matched handed pair.

There were also two RNZAF MIAMI CLASS American patrol craft bought by the RNZAF around 1948. One, W275, was sent to Lauthala Bay, Fiji, by the RNZAF, while the other, W276, remained here. W276 had two Hall Scott Defenders mounted in the stern and vee driven.

W276 WITH HER 2 HALL SCOTT DEFENDER V12 PETROL MARINE ENGINES  

JUNKERS GERMAN DIESEL AIRCRAFT ENGINE TO BE HOME CONVERTED FOR MARINE USE 

JUNKERS DOUBLE ACTING DUAL PISTON 6 CYL estimated at c.1000HP GERMAN AIRCRAFT ENGINE.

This boat (W276) as featured above, was sold in the 1960s to a Mr. Canavan, a retired senior Air Force officer. He employed two marine engineers to convert two German two-stroke Junkers aircraft diesel engines (probably the same or like those in the image above), which, as far as I can interpret, seem to have been around 1,000 hp each. He acquired and converted them for marine use, replacing the two Hall Scotts with these engines. 

This was a long and very expensive task for Mr. Canavan. During this process, she was moored adjacent to the up-harbour end of the Naval Base and was still painted air force grey. During the installation she acquired four very large exhaust pipe holes near the deck line at the stern.

These engines, like the engine in the hydrofoil MANU-WAI, required hot engine oil to be pumped through them for 20 minutes before cold starts. The two engineers, as mentioned above, eventually finished the project and went off to find Mr. Canavan so he could be present for their first start. While they were away looking for him, he turned up, went out to the boat, saw that they were ready to go, and pushed the buttons. They started but immediately seized up as they had not had the hot oil process completed first.

When the two engineers came back, they were naturally furious that after all their hard work, it had all come to this. So, as one would expect, they just picked up their tools and walked off the job. Eventually, Canavan got two more engineers to rebuild the engines, and while they were in the process of this, one day, when they were brazing with bottled gas, the stern end of the boat caught fire, and the aft 20 feet or thereabouts was destroyed. 

The insurance company sold her “as is, where is,” and someone bought her, chopped off the burnt-out back end, and fitted her, in her now shortened form, with two 6/71 GM Detroit diesels, added new pleasure craft-type coamings, and called her the LADY SOMETHING? or SOMETHING LADY?. This work was all done on the hardstand at Half Moon Bay Marina.

With her back end chopped off and her new coamings fitted, she looked very short and fat.

WAUKESHA HESSELMAN, LOW COMPRESSION, SPARK IGNITED DIESEL ENGINES.

WAUKESHA HESSLEMAN, SPARK IGNITED, 6 CYL DIESEL ENGINE.

WAUKESHA HESSELMAN SPARK IGNITED  LOW COMPRESSION DIAGRAMATIC VEW OF ENGINE DESIGN.

AWARUA WITH HER 6CYL WAUKESHA HESSELMAN DIESEL ENGINE.

LADY RAE, STANDING IN, FOR IDENTICAL SISTERSHIP, GALA LASS.

There were only two boats fitted with the 6-cylinder version of these engines, which had around 100+ hp. 

They were Ted Cooper’s built and owned AWARUA, which for the first couple of years had a Redwing petrol engine. He later replaced this with a Waukesha Hesselman 6-cylinder diesel, which she had for the remainder of his stewardship. A later owner, replaced it with a Ford diesel.

The other boat was the GALA LASS, which had an identical sister ship, the LADY RAE. 

GALA LASS had a Waukesha Hesselman diesel from new for the entire time of ownership by the original owner, Tony Hurt.  The LADY RAE had both one and two engines at different times, both with petrol or diesel, as was appropriate during her early years. I have not been able to locate an image of GALA LASS. I have substituted an image of LADY RAE in place of GALA LASS.