From models to memories

The Port Museum at Founders Heritage Park contains a record of Nelson's extensive maritime legacy and boasts superb models of many of the boats which once came and went from our shores. Peta Raggett has played a huge role in establishing the museum and has meticulously hand-built many of the models displayed there from scratch. Justin Eade talks to Peta about her interesting life and how she came to be involved at The Port Museum.

Peta was born Peter Raggett near Guildford, England, and moved to New Zealand in 1966 at age 23, living in Invercargill for 18 years before moving to Nelson in 1984. In 2005, Peter changed her gender and became Peta. However, before that, she was working in joinery and furniture stores in Nelson, making bespoke antique furniture pieces.

Peta had made models as a youngster in England, but it wasn’t until a few years after moving to Nelson that her interest in model-making was rekindled.
“I’ve always been interested in ships. I was making model boats way back in the 1950s,” Peta says.

After relocating, Peta was a Cub Leader for seven years and got involved in the Air Training Corps, where she taught model-making. Then, in 1993, she decided she’d start on a model of the Edwin Fox, now located in Picton, and built two models of the Janie Seddon – one when it was being used as a minesweeper and the other when it was being used as a fishing boat by Talleys.

Peta has been involved with Founders Heritage Park since 1986 when she began volunteering there. Eventually, she ended up doing a lot of the maintenance there and setting up the displays.

“All the different shops and stuff we fitted out… I did all those. My father was a shoe repairer, so it was no problem for me to do the shoe repair shop. We had no money, so we just used what we could find from the tip, or people donated stuff, and we did the whole place up like that. One shop in Montgomery Square donated a lot of cabinetry, they brought it all down to Founders and we reused it, made shelves and cabinets, and fitted out the whole Apothecary shop like that.”

The Port Museum at Founders is something Peta is passionate about, having put so much work into it. It is made up of two buildings near a small jetty at the edge of the Founders pond.

A theatrette in one of the buildings plays a short film on the history of Port Nelson (1841–1980) and the making of the ‘Cut’ in 1906, which has seen a steady stream of impressive shipping in and out of the harbour ever since.

Other exhibits at the museum include part of Captain Ricketts’ collection of bottles containing ships, including models of the Awaroa, Edwin Fox, and Janie Seddon. There’s also a figurehead from the bow of the ship Messenger, which ran aground off Farewell Spit in 1879.

There are also paintings of the harbour entry and Fifeshire Rock, including one from John Saxton, from a time before Rocks Road was cut out of the foreshore. There’s a model of the old harbour made by John Turner, with a display of the saltwater baths. Elsewhere there are displays of rare coral, nautical flags and knots, and D.N. Frost's model of the HMS Victory.

Peta finds Nelson’s maritime history particularly interesting and has built two models of the Fifeshire. She has also made a model of the Wellington, the last big ship to come into Nelson around the side of Haulashore, before the Cut was made.

She says this museum is unique because there’s nothing else in the country that features the immigrant ships that came here, and she built eight of them, including the Fifeshire, Lord Auckland, Bolton, Prince of Wales, and St Pauli, a German ship. (The Fifeshire and Lord Auckland were early migrant ships that departed for Nelson in 1841.)

Another of Peta’s models is the Mataura, built in Glasgow in 1868, and fitted with a dry air refrigerator. It was used to successfully transport frozen meat to England in 1882.

Most of the models are self-made, not kitset, and Peta has to do a lot of research about the ships overseas, which can be expensive. As well as the models in the Founders Maritime Museum, Peta has others scattered around, including one commissioned by Wellington City Council, three at Picton, another three over at the Motueka Museum, one in Isel House, and one with the Sea Cadets.

Peta draws up all the plans herself, usually taking a year to do that and another year to build the models themselves on a scale of 1:48 or 1:96. She says there are a lot of details on her models, like sailors climbing the rigging and adjusting the sails on the yards, tidying ropes on the belaying pins, officers giving orders, and sailors scrubbing the decks with buckets of water, as well as manning the wheel and keeping lookout on the bow.

“On one ship, they are using the capstan to bring up the anchor; on another, one seaman is showing two others how to splice a rope. On another, there are three passengers sitting on deck in their top hats, reading books, just like the sketch done by a fellow passenger in 1841. Then we come to the pig and sheep pens and fowl cages, which were dismantled for fuel when not in use. Each ship had spare masts and yards bolted to the deck. And lastly, the lifeboats and dinghies are all clinker-built with oars, just like the real ones. You won't find anything like it anywhere else.”

Peta’s hopes for the future are that someone else will come along to keep the museum alive and perhaps even try and make a proper building out of it, as “it’s pretty ad hoc, the way it’s been done. I’m full of enthusiasm but suffering many health problems now. My brain works really well, but the rest of me is falling apart.”

Peta has put in over ten thousand hours of community service for various organisations, and she has written three books: Square Rigged Sailing Ships Visiting Nelson, An Unusual Life, and Heard at the Hangar Door.

All in all, it has been a remarkable life, well-lived. So far. Peta considers it would be nice, though, if someone would come along and help with curation of the museum going forward.

If you are interested, please contact Peta on 03 539 6188 or email [email protected].