Pioneers of Rugby in Wellington 096: Hami Grace

Hami Grace was a wing three-quarter who played for Wellington and the North Island, and he was a Māori All Black.

He played club rugby for Wellington College Old Boys and later for the Wellington Axemen.

He also played Senior club cricket in Wellington and briefly first-class cricket for the province, so was a well-known Wellington sportsman across both codes prior to the start of the first world war.

When war broke out, Grace enlisted with the Wellington Infantry Battalion and was subsequently killed at Chunuk Bair, Gallipoli, on 8 August 1915.

Thomas Marshall Percy (Hami) Grace was born in Pukawa on the southwestern shore of Lake Taupo on 11 July 1890, where his grandfather, the Rev T.S. Grace, had a mission station. His other grandfather was a Ngāti Tūwharetoa Paramount Chief Te Heuheu.

Part of a large family, Grace moved to Marlborough to live with his uncle the Ven. Archdeacon Grace and attended Blenheim Borough School and Marlborough High School. His father, L.S. Grace, was head of the Government Native Office in Wellington and an interpreter, and Hami Grace moved across Cook Strait to Newtown in Wellington and attended Wellington College with his brothers.

Whilst at school he excelled for both the rugby First XV and cricket First XI (captain), once taking 5 for 66 and 5 for 29 against Whanganui Collegiate. He was also a member of the Wellington College shooting team – skills that would be utilised to deadly effect several years later.

Soon after leaving school, he joined the fledgling Wellington College Old Boys club in 1910. WCOB had a satisfying season, winning seven from 12 matches, with captain Harry Avery making the All Blacks and Grace, H.H Dawson and W.C Alexander making the Wellington representative team.

Grace also made the North Island team in 1910, and again in 1911. He played on the left wing in both these matches, with the South winning 14-10 in 1910 and the North winning 19-9 in 1911 and Grace scoring a try.

Returning in 1911, WCOB had another competitive season, and Grace again played for Wellington and he made the New Zealand Māori side for the first time.

The New Zealand Māori undertook an internal national tour in 1911, winning five of 10 matches and on 16 August they played against the Wellington represeantive team, losing 5-26.

Grace retuned to WCOB in 2012, amid high hopes for the team in the Senior Championship. But the team was at first hampered by and then soon decimated by injuries. Dai Hayward, in his history of the club wrote that the Senior team was down to six players, so they have no choice but to withdraw from the competition.

Grace and several other fit players joined other clubs as ‘loan players’, and Grace himself went over to the Wellington Axemen whom he played for again in 1913 and 1914.

The Axemen were runners-up to Athletic in 1913, and then shared the title with Athletic in 1914.

For the Wellington representative team, Grace played 15 matches between 1910-14.

He scored 11 tries for Wellington, scoring two tries in a match on two occasions – against Canterbury in 1911 (won 26-9), against Southland in 2012 (won 30-6). He also scored a hat-trick for a Wellington XV against Manawatu-Horowhenua in 1910 (won19-11).

Grace played for the New Zealand Māori team in 2013 on its eight-game tour to Australia and seven-match internal tour that followed, which included a 23-21 loss to Wellington.

On 3 June 1914, Grace played his third match for the New Zealand Māori team against Wellington, this time losing 13-15.

Adding up his career, Grace played 39 first-class matches, scoring 25 tries.

In cricket, he played for the South club and over Christmas 1910/11 he was in a Wellington team that played Marlborough in a non first-class match and he top scored with an unbeaten 79. In the same match, one Clarrie Grimmett (later an Australian test leg-spinner in the Bradman era) took 3 for 38 and 5 for 20.

South folded at the start of the 1913/14 season, Grace’s last, and was replaced by Wellington College Old Boys. Early in the New Year, Grace scored 28 and 16 not out and took 4 for 6 in an 85-run first-class win for Wellington over Otago in Dunedin.

He lived in Newtown and worked for the Post and Telegraph Department. When war broke out he was amongst the first wave of enlistees, attesting on 13 August 1914 and heading to Egypt and then Gallipoli in 1915.

He played one match for the New Zealand Expeditionary Force against Manawatu prior to embarking for overseas.

He enlisted as a private, but was soon promoted to Sergeant and then promoted to second lieutenant soon after the landing on Gallipoli on day two of the campaign on 26 April

.Grace gained a reputation as an accurate marksman and his commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel William Malone gave him the task of leading ‘counter sniper’ teams to clear out the Turkish snipers, which proved effective and boosted morale.

In his book, Gallipoli, the New Zealand Story, Christopher Pugsley wrote that “Grace’s snipers, posted throughout the valley, placed a barrier as impenetrable as any earthwork between the traffic and Monash valley and the Turks whose trenches overlooked it.”

Grace celebrated his 25^th birthday at Gallipoli in the heat of July as the high command planned a significant offensive scheduled for early August.

It kicked off on 6 August and on 8 August the New Zealanders seized the high point of the Gallipoli Peninsula and fierce fighting ensued over the next two days as they waited for reinforcements and for the planned-for British breakthrough just up the coast. Relief failed to arrive and they subsequently relinquished their gains with the loss of many lives. Grace was one of 484 New Zealanders killed on that day.

Grace was mentioned in despatches in July 1915 and published in New Zealand newspapers posthumously in October: “With one man he crawled through the scrub and hurled bombs into a Turkish picket, and then profited by their confusion to crawl still further and throw bombs right into the Turkish trench. They had to lie in a watercourse until the hail of bullets which the Turks fired wildly into the darkness and then crawl down a gully back to our lines.”

REFERENCES

• Akers, Clive. New Zealand Rugby Register 1870-2015. New Zealand Rugby Museum, 2016.
• Carman, Arthur H. Wellington Cricket Centenary 1875-1975. Sporting Publications, Wellington 1975.
• Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 99, 23 October 1915. ‘The Way of the Sniper.’
• Hayward, Dai. Follow Up. 100 Years of the Wellington College Old Boys’ Rugby Football Club. W.C.O.B Centennial Committee, Wellington, 1998.
• Mulholland, Malcom. Beneath the Maori Moon. An Illustrated History of Maori Rugby. Huia Publishers, Wellington, 2009.
• New Zealand History online: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/video/hami-grace-great-war-story ‘Hāmi Grace Great War Story.’
• Pugsley, Christopher. Gallipoli, the New Zealand Story. Reed publishing, Auckland 1998.
• Quinn, Keith. Give ‘Em the Axe! 150 years of the Wellington Football Club. Wakefields Digital, Wellington, 2020.
• Swan, Arthur C. Jackson, Gordon F. W. (1952). Wellington’s Rugby History 1870 – 1950. Wellington, New Zealand: A. H. & A. W. Reed.
• Swan, Arthur C. History of New Zealand Rugby Football V.1 1870-1945. A.H. & A.W. Reed, Wellington, 1948.
• Wellington College Old Boys Football Club. Golden Jubilee 1898-1948 Souvenir Booklet