Riddle of Savage's bones

The coffin is thought to be under the tomb's floor. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

For almost two years, the remains of Labour Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage were missing.

Auckland heritage experts investigating subsidence around Bastion Pt's Savage Memorial became sidetracked by an exploration of the great man's whereabouts.

To their horror, they could find no physical proof that he was where he was expected to be: buried inside a lead coffin within a concrete sarcophagus, above ground at the centre of the tomb under the plinth memorial, overlooking the Waitemata Harbour.

"To our amazement, he wasn't inside," recalls Auckland City's heritage manager, George Farrant, of his tomb search in 2003 with Auckland University archaeology professor Doug Sutton and a documentary television crew.

One thing they did know: the deceased leader had been on quite a safari before he was laid to rest.

After his death on March 27, 1940, the first Labour Prime Minister was taken on a national tour, where people poured out their grief, then laid to rest in what Mr Farrant described as "a hurriedly converted gun pit" underground at Bastion Pt.

From there, he was shifted to St Patrick's Catholic Cathedral in Wyndham St, where he spent many months in a lead coffin while entries were called for a memorial design competition.

St Patrick's business manager, Kevin Sherlock, said the body was parked in the northeast corner of the cathedral from June 1941 to March 1943. "It was a choir room at the time."

But parliamentary historian John Martin disagrees, saying the coffin left the cathedral on February 4, 1942.

Mr Savage was then thought to have been laid to his final rest in the cement sarcophagus within the large tomb, lit continually and clearly visible through barred windows in doors at the foot of the monument.

It was not until a large fissure opened in ground on the northern side of the memorial above Tamaki Drive more than two years ago that the experts thought to question Mr Savage's location.

The new hole was above gun pits which run 3m below ground, long since filled in, but Auckland City officials worried about the area's stability and the potential for a slip on to one of the city's busiest thoroughfares - with the dreadful potential to take the former Prime Minister's earthly remains with it.

"We asked ourselves why soil and water was disappearing into a supposedly sealed and filled gun pit above cliffs on one of our busiest highways," Mr Farrant said.

Also of concern was paving subsidence on the tomb's northern side and the white cement tomb itself, which leaks.

A radar scan of the sarcophagus revealed it was empty. But an underground probe via remote camera revealed an iron door nearby and the experts began to wonder if Mr Savage's remains were hidden during World War II deep down in one of the former military tunnels.

"Fears were that the Prime Minister's body could be kidnapped and Japanese scout aeroplanes had been sighted over Auckland," Mr Farrant said.

But extensive excavations shed no light on his whereabouts, which were also being tracked by a television documentary team led by Simon Dallow.

One of the programmes in the eight-episode history investigation, What Lies Beneath, to be aired on TVNZ early next year, tracks the tomb search.

It was only the discovery of correspondence from Internal Affairs to the Public Works Department, mentioning that Mr Savage's remains should be returned to Bastion Pt before the floor was cast, that solved the riddle. "We thought ah-ha! He's under the floor," Mr Farrant said, "just like in the great European cathedral tradition."

So the radar detection system was angled at 45 degrees between the floor and the front of the sarcophagus. "We then got a powerful echo at two points, 2m apart, where it hit the lead lining of the coffin, so we're now 99 per cent sure he's under the floor, under the sarcophagus," Mr Farrant said.

The mystery will not be fully solved until further investigations are made when the earth stabilisation project gets under way this summer. Then, radar tests will scan for Mr Savage's coffin on a horizontal plane to confirm his exact whereabouts.


Who Was Michael Joseph Savage?
* The Labour leader, one of New Zealand's most revered political figures, was Prime Minister from 1935 until his wartime death in office in March 1940.
* Best known as the architect of the welfare state. He was the leader of New Zealand's first Labour Government.


Plans for memorial
* Excavate and fill former military areas this summer.
* Restore paving areas around memorial after stabilising soil.
* New drainage to be laid between memorial and Tamaki Drive.
* Estimated cost: $50,000 to $70,000, yet to be confirmed.
* Ministry of Culture and Heritage to assist in funding job.