On 29 April 1864, the Battle of Gate Pa was fought in New Zealand between the British under Duncan Cameron and the Maori under Rawiri Puhirake during the New Zealand Wars.
Why did it happen?
Following the end of the first phase of the New Zealand Wars in 1847, Maori became increasingly concerned over the increasing loss of their lands to British settlers. Some Maori suggested that they would have more luck in defending their lands against the British if they were united under one leader. In 1858, the Maori King Movement was established in the Waikato with Te Wherowhero crowned King Potatau I. Five years later, on 12 July 1863, British general Duncan Cameron invaded the Waikato with a force of 18,000 troops to suppress the King Movement. After defeating the Maori at the Battle of Orakau on 2 April 1864, Cameron decided to shift his theatre of operations to Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty, where Maori had been sending supplies to the King Movement. In response, Maori built and occupied a pa on Pukehinahina ridge, only five kilometres from the British camp at Tauranga, and incited the British to attack the pa head-on.
Who was involved?
The British army at Gate Pa numbered 1,700 infantry and 17 artillery. The British plan was to subject the pa to a lengthy artillery barrage before sending in the infantry to occupy and kill any remaining Maori defenders. This strategy would later be employed on the Western Front during the First World War and was summed up by J.F.C. Fuller who stated that “artillery conquers and infantry occupies.” The Maori at Gate Pa consisted of 230 warriors. Despite being outnumbered, the pa that they occupied, known as the Gate Pa, due to it being near a gate in the post-and-rail above a ditch near the town of Tauranga, was the strongest pa ever built. The pa had been constructed by Pene Taka Tuaia and was built of manuka stakes along with posts, rails, and fences from British settler and military camps. It had an outer fence to impede charging soldiers and had small underground bunkers to resist artillery bombardment connected to outer trenches and rifle-pits.
What happened?
At 8 am on 29 April, Duncan Cameron ordered a heavy artillery bombardment of Gate Pa in what was probably the greatest seen until the First World War. However, most of the Maori defenders hid underground and thus suffered minimal casualties. At 4 pm, Cameron ordered 300 British soldiers to move in and occupy the pa. To give the illusion that their defences had been destroyed, the Maori defenders in the outer trenches and rifle-pits fired occasional shots from their muskets. As the British entered the pa, the 200 Maori warriors who had hidden in their underground bunkers, opened fire upon the British, who suffered heavy casualties. To make matters worse, a second force of 200 British troops was ordered forward, increasing the number of combatants within the pa. With many of their officers dead, the surviving British troops then fled from Gate Pa in disorder. At nightfall, as the British regrouped and entrenched themselves around the pa, the remaining Maori warriors seized the opportunity to slip away under the cover of darkness. While the Maori lost 19 killed and 6 wounded, the British suffered 31 killed and 80 wounded.
What changed as a result?
The Battle of Gate Pa was a Maori victory. Although the Maori would be defeated at the Battle of Te Ranga on 21 June, Gate Pa convinced Cameron that it was nearly impossible to capture a completed modern pa manned by disciplined defenders. As he later stated to Governor George Grey, “Experience has shown me that it is not generally desirable to attack such positions” (Dalley & McLean, 2005, p.139). After Cameron was replaced by Henry Greer in 1865, the British Government decided to allow the New Zealand Colonial Administration to exercise more control over its own affairs. The role of British troops was subsequently downplayed and replaced by settler militia and volunteer units throughout the rest of the New Zealand Wars.
Bibliography
Cowan, James. “Plan of the attack on Gate Pa.” Wikimedia Commons. Last revised October 20, 2009. www.commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plan_of_the_attack_on_gate_pa.jpg
Dalley, Bronwyn. & McLean, Gavin. Frontier of Dreams: The Story of New Zealand. Auckland, Hodder Moa, 2005.
Grant, R.G. 1001 Battles That Changed the Course of History. London, Cassell Illustrated, 2011.
Grant, R.G. Battle: A Visual Journey Through 5,000 Years of Combat. London, Dorling Kindersley, 2005.
McLauchlan, Gordon. A Short History of the New Zealand Wars. Auckland, Bateman, 2017.