Steam Ferry Toroa is the seventh heritage site published on Tohu Heritage, and the first in the Transport category. Launched on 28 April 1925 from George Niccol’s yard at St Mary’s Bay, she carried more than a thousand passengers at a time across the Waitematā for fifty five years, and by her retirement in 1980 had carried over seventy million people.
She was built for the Devonport Steam Ferry Company, working the Devonport run alongside Makora. Before the Auckland Harbour Bridge opened in 1959, the two ferries moved twenty thousand or more passengers a day between the city and the North Shore. Toroa was the last steam passenger ferry ever built for Auckland, and she is the only one left.
She sits today at Selwood Road in Henderson, in the care of the Toroa Preservation Society, part way through a restoration that reached her centenary in 2025. You can explore Steam Ferry Toroa now.
Toroa is also the first site we have published with no heritage protection of any kind. Rules under the New Zealand Heritage List and Auckland Council’s Unitary Plan exclude movable watercraft from formal recognition, because a historic place is anchored to land and to the things fixed to it. A hundred-year-old steam ferry being restored plank by plank has no listing pathway and no heritage covenant behind it. That absence is a large part of why we documented her.
A note from the founder
While chatting with Fiona, I found out about the Steam Ferry Toroa volunteer team, and just felt like getting out there and being part of it. And here we are, with the first 3D capture of Auckland’s last steam ferry. Thank you Fiona, Peter and Rob for welcoming me into this unique experience.
