Re-ballasting Florence

My grandfather, Charles Wells, was a postmaster who served in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Amongst his postings were Rawene on the Hokianga in the sailing ship kauri timber trade days, at Silverdale, when it was just a tiny hamlet on the Wade River, and finally at Whitianga, at the height of the Coromandel gold days and the growing Coromandel kauri timber industry.

My father, Norman Wells, born in December 1886, had learned a great deal about sail and about small boats as a boy in his Hokianga days. Some nautical terminology stayed with