Northern Steamship Company

Its headquarters, the Northern Steam Ship Company Building, remains in use on Quay Street, Auckland as a bar and is listed by Heritage New Zealand as a Category I Historic Place.

Initially there were very few roads and they were muddy and narrow, so a constant theme in early papers was a demand from small coastal settlements for a regular shipping service to link them with the major ports.

He joined with a syndicate of owners to run the Argyle, Iona, Glenelg, Staffa, Rowena, Fingal and Katikati, as Auckland Steam Packet Co.[4] ASP went into liquidation in 1878[5] due to losses on a ship for the Fiji trade, the SS Llewellyn.

[6] On 10 January 1878 ASP had sold Southern Cross for £7000, Go-Ahead for £2500, Pretty Jane for £2350 and the Cantera hulk and her coal for £384, to what was described as a newly formed Auckland company.

[13] By 1887 the depression[14] was affecting the company; wages and overtime pay were cut,[9] and seamen who objected were replaced with non-unionists.

[15] In response the Federated Seamen's Union formed the co-operative Jubilee Steam Ship Co, competing on the northern and Waitara routes.

He remained a lifelong friend of the union boss, John A. Millar,[19] and received an award from staff in 1897 for his considerate attitude to them.

In 1887, he was about to return to England, when NSS director, James McCosh Clark, mentioned that the board had decided to wind up the company.

[19] After his appointment, NSS bought some second-hand screw-steamers, the Rotomahana, Waiotahi and Ohinemuri and small paddle steamers, Te Aroha and Enterprise, to work on the Waihou River.

[45] Charles was also a steward of the Auckland Racing Club, an enthusiastic bowler, keenly interested in regattas and a church warden.

[46] Charles Ranson commissioned Arthur Pollard Wilson (who also designed Strand Arcade, Naval and Family Hotel, A H Nathan Warehouse and Isaacs’ Bonded Stores)[47] to design the £6000 (or £5000)[48] building, with a frontage of 66 ft (20 m) to the street, and a depth of 85 ft (26 m),[49] opposite the wharf used by their steamers, on newly reclaimed land, leased from Auckland Harbour Board (AHB).

The land on the other side the building was their yard until the 1950s when AHB roofed it over as a garage in an attempt to compete with trucking firms.

When the North Island Main Trunk (NIMT) opened in 1908 between Auckland and Wellington, New Plymouth passenger traffic dropped.

[55] The office at Canaan Landing, served from May 1881[56] and providing for freight between Te Puke and Maketu, closed on 29 September 1917.

[81] In 1937 passenger services still ran to Algies, Coromandel, Great Barrier, Matakana, Mahurangi, One Tree Point, Waiheke, Warkworth and Whangārei.

[89] NSS briefly tried replacing a ship with a partly owned trucking company, when it closed its Paeroa service in 1947.

[92] This required increasingly larger ships, so NSS bought Apanui (1948–61), Tainui (1949–63), Hotunui (1950–67), Ratanui (1952-56), and then started building Maranui (1953–68), Maunganui (1955–71), Poranui (1956–69) and Tawanui (1959–73), Moanui (1961–66), Awanui (1962-73).

However, as AHB didn't build a ramp at Onehunga, she had to use the only one at Auckland, sharing it with Union, which had priority, hence her short service with NSS.

[96] By 1970 three of the remaining five ships were carrying bulk grain from South Island to Auckland, Tauranga, and, less often, Wellington, New Plymouth and Whanganui.

[99] By 1971 Awanui was the only general cargo vessel, running an Onehunga-Bluff-Jackson Bay round trip, but she was also adapted to carry grain in 1972.

[89] When NSS failed to change government policy, it decided in April 1975 to sell the ships[103] and the company was taken over by Brierley.