Ruapekapeka is the "bats nest" fighting pa which Ngati Hine rangatira Te Ruki Kawiti designed 6km east of Towai. It was where the last major battle in the Flagstaff War between northern Maori and the fledgling British colonial administration took place 178 years ago.
On New Year's Day in 1846 about 1600 British troops with Maori supporters began bombarding the pa with cannons, howitzers, mortars and rockets. Their leader, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Despard, had learned he had to soften up the Maori defenders after 33 of his troops had been killed when he tried a direct frontal assault on a Kawiti-reinforced pa at Ohaeawai six months earlier.
Inside, the daily British barrage had little effect on 400 warriors sheltering in tunnels, trenches and bunkers behind a stout puriri palisade. Hone Heke arrived with up to 100 reinforcements on January 9, but shells breached the palisade the next day and on January 11, while the defenders were at prayer behind the pa, troops entered and claimed victory.
The British burned the pa, but today the site, pockmarked by the remains of underground defences, stands as a monument to Maori ingenuity in overcoming European firepower.
Most of the site was confiscated under the Public Works Act in 1914. The pa is the subject of Treaty of Waitangi grievance claims to be heard by the Waitangi Tribunal.
Te Ruapekapeka Trust and DoC are to launch a Ruapekapeka website with a ceremony at the Whangarei Public Library on February 14.
