Gate Pā
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gate Pā is the name given to provocative fortress the Māori built in 1864 only 5km from the main British base at Tauranga during Tauranga Campaign of the New Zealand land wars.
The name comes from it appearance, the palisade looked liked a picket fence while a higher part in the middle resembled a gate. pa is the Māori word for a hill fort.
By the end of April the British were ready to attack. They had 1700 men and were opposed by merely 230 Māori, it looked like a good opportunity to score a decisive victory.
A heavy bombardment was begun at daybreak on 29 April 1864 and continued for eight hours; the British had 15 artillery pieces including one of 110 pounds (50 kg). By mid afternoon the Pā looked as if it had been demolished and there was a large breach in the center of the palisade. At 4 p.m. the barrage was lifted and 300 troops were sent up to capture and secure the position.
Within ten minutes well over a hundred of them were dead or wounded. There was no second assault. During the night the Māori gave assistance to the wounded and collected their weapons; by day break they had abandoned the position. Gate Pā was the single most devastating defeat suffered by the British military in the whole of the New Zealand land wars.
General Cameron was probably the most able of the different commanders of the Imperial forces to serve in New Zealand. He knew from experience the likely cost of making a frontal assault on a defended Pā and he was usually very careful with his men's lives. But a frontal assault is what he ordered. It seems likely that he believed the bombardment had been long enough and intense enough to extinguish all resistance from within the Pa. One historian calculated that Gate Pā absorbed in eight hours a greater weight of explosive per square metre than did the German trenches in the week long bombardment leading up to the Battle of the Somme in World War I. If true then Cameron's assumption seems to have been a reasonable one.
But Gate Pā wasn't quite what it appeared to be. From the British positions it looked like fairly large strongpoint occupying the entire hill top. In fact it was much smaller being two low redoubts on either side of the ridge joined by a deep trench about forty metres long and the whole shielded by a strong wooden palisade. It seems likely that British concentrated their barrage towards the center, that is where the palisade had collapsed and that is where the attack went in. Meanwhile the two redoubts had been built very strong with deep and effective bomb proof shelters. The Māori may have been deafened by the bombardment but as soon as it ended they were able to unleash a devastating ambush.
To contemporaries Gate Pā was seen as a shattering defeat. Indeed it was. The perception was that 1700 elite British troops had been defeated by 230 half naked savages. The arrogance of the settlers and the hubris of the British Empire took a serious blow. Governor George Grey came down to Tauranga and began peace negotiations. Cameron returned to Auckland leaving Colonel Greer in command, strictly on the defensive.
