Cliff Hawkins' first book, published in 1947, recorded the history of the Huia, one of the last topsail schooners trading in New Zealand coastal waters.
* Clifford William Hawkins, MNZM, maritime historian. Died aged 93.
When Cliff Hawkins was a young man working for the Post Office in Auckland in the 1930s, his boss was reluctant to send him down to the wharves to deliver telegrams. He was always late back, and often
a co-worker had to be sent to retrieve him.
The ships - the barques, scows and huge windjammers trading out of the port - entranced Hawkins.
He befriended Harbour Board workers, including tug skippers and pilots, giving him the chance to go out to meet the ships coming in and, more particularly, to photograph them.
During Army service in World War II Hawkins became a sort of unofficial photographer, snapping convoys at sea and ships such as the Queen Mary, Aquitania and Empress of Britain.
Such photos would surely have been confiscated had they been found, but Hawkins managed to smuggle them home to add to his collection.
After the war, Hawkins began writing, using his own photographs as illustrations. His book Log of the Huia recorded the history of one of the last topsail schooners trading in New Zealand's coastal waters. It was published in 1947, and ran to three reprints.
By this time Hawkins was working as a draughtsman for the Waitemata Electric Power Board. His concentration, and his pen, would sometimes wander, and sketches of ships would accompany plans of power lines.
Hawkins would use his annual leave to travel to the Kaipara and Hokianga Harbours and Coromandel to photograph and record the hulks lying in the shallows. Every couple of years or so he headed to East Africa, Suez or Indonesia, to draw and photograph local trading vessels.
More than 200 of his photographs featured in Argosy of Sail in 1980.
Other books included Out of Auckland in 1960, which later became A Maritime Heritage, and The Dhow.
He co-founded the Auckland Maritime Society, and was an early member of the Auckland Photographic Society. He was created a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2003. He is survived by his wife, Sheila, three sons and a daughter and four grandchildren.
