NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT.

Wairua used this funnel on the Ministry of Transport’s Bluff–Stewart Island ferry service.

Tangaroa’s 1972–84 DSIR funnel was light blue, with a darker-blue disc and a white three-masted barque, its mainsail partly furled. The emblem includes interrupted white rings. Correspondence led Rosanoski to revise his reading from one ring above and one below to two at each position, adding small white balls in the breaks.

Rosanoski saw Rapuhia’s dark-blue flag at Lyttelton on 25 May 1988: a white three-masted vessel with double arcs above and below. It belonged to the Marine & Fresh Water Science Oceanographic Institute, a DSIR division; Rapuhia was then contracted to New Zealand (CQX) Ltd. Bob’s earlier Tangaroa observation placed the ring breaks at four and eight o’clock rather than three and nine, with a small white ball in each. Rosanoski accepted that this might be more accurate than his own flapping-flag observation. Rapuhia’s funnel was not recorded; buff with a black top was only presumed.

Tangaroa was sighted at Lyttelton on 10 January 1992 with a bright royal-blue flag, three white curved lines of decreasing thickness and slightly angled white MAF in the lower fly. Flag proportions appeared to be 2:1, matching the funnel panel confirmed in a Wellington photograph of 11 April 1995. A pamphlet suggested Agriculture used a bright-green version, apparently not aboard ship, but Rosanoski retained no further record.

The flag reported on chartered Wanaka in 1986 is blue over green, with a large yellow disc about two-thirds towards the fly bearing a blue lower-case a. Its horizontal arm stops short of the vertical, which has a small nick. It was subsequently identified as Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, or MAFFish, with Wanaka on fisheries research charter in 1985–86. Green may signify agriculture and blue fisheries; an a could suggest agriculture, but no f could be discerned. The illustration is reconstructed solely from the verbal description, as the promised slide was never received. Wanaka retained a stone or dark-cream funnel with a teal-blue S.