New Zealand’s First Successful Motorcycle

By Ashley Blair

The early twentieth century was the beginning of the “golden age” of cycling in New Zealand. Bicycles were affordable and used for getting to work, for recreation and for racing. A 20% tariff on imported bicycles encouraged local manufacture and in 1900 there were 25 cycle factories in Christchurch from a total of 71 in New Zealand. Canterbury, relatively flat compared to other provinces, was the centre of cycling in the colony with its very own cycling magazine The New Zealand Wheelman, published in Christchurch from 1892 to 1902 by Alex Wildey. This magazine, together with the cycling columns in newspapers, reported early developments in motoring, and in particular motor bicycles which were initially regarded as an offshoot of cycling. Every town had at least one cycle shop with fully equipped workshop serviced by highly skilled mechanics. Most of the early initiatives with motorised vehicles in New Zealand originated in cycle workshops.

In July 1899 Raymond Henry Every, a 21-year-old cycle mechanic, formed a partnership with Charles Thomas Jessep, a cyclist of local fame. Jessep set the record for riding from Temuka to Winchester and return in May 1899. His time for the eleven miles was 22½ minutes, “a really splendid performance” according to the Temuka Leader. Jessep and Every started the Stella Cycle Works in a wooden building on the main street of Temuka. A large crowd gathered for the Saturday night opening of the Stella Works, attracted by the novel sight of acetylene lighting which showed the American made Potomac and Envoy bicycles in the showroom windows “to perfection”.

Raymond Every was born in Oamaru on 9 September 1878 the fifth of nine children of Frederick, a carpenter, and Henrietta Every. He studied engineering through The American School of Correspondence based in Boston, U.S.A. In December 1901, at the height of his prominence in newspapers, Every was happy to endorse the school by saying, “I have come to the conclusion that the money spent in joining it is the most profitable investment that I have ever made.”

Every would have seen the first car to arrive at Temuka on the evening of Monday 17 June 1900. Constructed by another cycle maker, Fred Dennison of Christchurch, this small single cylinder vehicle was mounted on four bicycle wheels. Dennison drove this vehicle, the first motor car constructed in New Zealand, from Christchurch to Oamaru1. After seeing Dennison’s vehicle, and reading about developments overseas, the possibility of fitting a motor to a bicycle would not have escaped Every. At the November 1900 Timaru Show the Stella Cycle Works display of bicycles built by Every was well received and attracted a considerable amount of attention. C.T. Jessep and Company were now the largest bicycle manufacturers in South Canterbury. Late in October 1901 they announced, “We shall have on Exhibition at the Christchurch, Timaru, and Oamaru Shows a MOTOR BICYCLE, which is the first manufactured in the colony.”2 

Well, when I put this machine together I’d got the machine all ready and when I clamped the rim, the driving rim, on the back wheel and tried to put it in the forks of the bicycle there wasn’t room. So I had to go to the local blacksmith and ask him to forge me a U shaped piece and cut the back fork and file it all up, no emery wheels, all had to be done by file. File it all up, fit it in and braze and that gave clearance for the rim, the driving rim. And then the belt was twisted hide and if the belt slipped all you did was jump off, undo the clip that held it, the two ends and give it a few more twists.4

Early in November 1901 Every took The Stella by train to Christchurch for Carnival Week. Its first public appearance was at Lancaster Park on Monday 4 November at The Canterbury Athletic and Cycling Club carnival meeting held under electric lights. The evening began with a procession from Cathedral Square to Lancaster Park. There were cycle races, a race between a local scorcher (current slang for a cyclist who rode furiously) and a trotting horse, highland fling, hornpipe and piping competitions, fireworks and musical selections by The Woolston and Engineers' Bands. One of the highlights of the carnival was Raymond Every’s demonstration of The Stella. The 23-year-old Every, described in one newspaper as “a lad”, circled the track several times at almost 20 miles per hour. It was regarded as “a particularly successful debut.” A motor bicycle was such a novelty to many people that the Star published a description for readers:

a motor bicycle may be roughly described, as an ordinary bicycle, upon which has been placed a motor that makes the machine self-propelling; all the rider has to do is to give it a start and then attend to the steering. To the motor-cyclist the head-winds and up-grades have no terrors, he simply turns the tap at full steam ahead and proceeds merrily, fanned by the additional breeze his motion causes. 5

On Wednesday 6 November 1901, the Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Association Show opened at the Addington Show Grounds. This was the day for machines, implements and articles manufactured in the Colony. The Stella, considered by the Star reporter to be one of the most attractive machines in the cycle section of the Show, was on display in the tent of Christchurch cycle dealers Messrs Barker and Lewis.

Four thousand people turned up at Lancaster Park on the evening of Friday 8 November 1901 to watch fireworks as well as cycling and athletic events organised by the long-established Pioneer Bicycle Club. The sensation of the evening was an “automobile handicap”. This was the first official motor race ever held in New Zealand and probably the first in Australasia. The distance was three miles and although six entrants were expected, on the day only four turned up: A. Lowry with a “motor-quad”,  Nicholas Oates with his 4½ horsepower Voiturette, H. J. Shaw, with a Comiot motor tricycle purchased two years previously from Mr Acton-Adams the Christchurch lawyer and financier and R.H. Every with The Stella motor bicycle. The handicapper had an impossible task. The Stella was given 150 yards and won by almost a lap in 11 minutes 18.2 seconds. The New Zealand Wheelman, in their “Maoriland Motorist” section, described The Stella’s performance: “The motor’s beautiful running qualities were seen and lustily applauded by four thousand people, the excitement recalling vividly the early days of racing.” At the same time traditional cyclists, “felt a pang of regret as they reflected on the fact that the days of the good old bike were numbered.”6

It is hard to imagine the impact a motor bicycle had on people who had only ever seen steam powered transport. The day after the race Every parked the Stella outside a shop while he went inside. Shortly after a policeman went into the shop to ask whose bicycle was parked outside. Every was told to move it as the large crowd admiring The Stella had almost completely blocked the road.

After his Lancaster Park success Every took The Stella on to the Timaru Show. They attracted more attention on the way at Ashburton where he had “a few spins through the main streets”. The Ashburton Guardian reported that the motor was easily manipulated, speed could be regulated from a walking pace to 25 miles per hour and any intelligent cyclist could learn to ride it in half an hour.7

Great interest was shown in The Stella at the Timaru Show. It was only run occasionally on its stand as the ground was unsuitable for riding. Every rode The Stella from Temuka to Oamaru and then from Oamaru on to Dunedin, a total of 135 miles. The Otago Witness of 11 December 1901 published a photograph of Raymond Every with The Stella. In 1968 Every recalled, “if you came to a hill that was a bit steep then you pedalled. Going from Oamaru to Dunedin all the pedalling in the world was no use. I very nearly pushed the thing over the bank and let it go to the bottom. It was hopelessly under powered; it was only one and a quarter (horsepower).”8

In mid-December Every demonstrated The Stella outside the offices of the Timaru Herald. The Herald reporter noted that, “To see the rider sailing by at a good pace, comfortably idle, furnished a strong temptation to break the tenth commandment. The motor is not exactly silent, and there is a visible vibration of the rider’s lower limbs.”9 The reporter was intrigued with the question of how the battery, known as an “accumulator”, would be charged “up country” as the Stella had no generator. It was speculated that on tourist routes hotelkeepers might have small dynamos run by either a waterwheel or a windmill or even large batteries which could charge the smaller motor bicycle battery.

People of Temuka were now used to the Stella “puffing every day in the week.” When Every rode the ten miles between Timaru and Temuka it took him just over half an hour. The Timaru Herald reported that the machine was, “an unqualified success. The machine is always ready. It can be set going in the twinkling of an eye, or stopped with equal readiness. All that is necessary is to switch off or on the electric current, and the desired effect is produced.”10

The last newspaper record we have of Raymond Every riding The Stella is at the South Canterbury Caledonian Society New Year’s Day Sports Meeting at Timaru in 1902 where he made several demonstration runs on the track.11 Among the newspaper clippings saved by Every and now held by his grandson is this notice:

For Sale, A Thoroughly Reliable Motor Bicycle, which has been well tried; it runs splendidly at any speed between 6 and 24 miles per hour. A trial may be arranged. Apply. MOTOR, Temuka.12

This advertisement which ran for four days in the Lyttleton Times can only have been for The Stella. This was a few weeks before Every left New Zealand.

Every’s success with his motor bicycle motivated him to travel overseas to gain experience in the new field of “automobilism”. On 8 May 1902 he left Lyttleton aboard the Athenic for London. From there he went on to Antwerp to work briefly at the Usines Minerva. His reference from Minerva stated that he had “been working in our shops to get an inside view of erecting and repairing small motors and we consider that he is now perfectly posted for doing such work."

After he left Minera, and for the rest of his working life, Every was involved with cars rather than motorcycles. He joined the Swift Motor Company at Coventry in September 1902. Within a few weeks he was an observer for Swift on the 1,000 mile trial organised by the Automobile Club of England and Ireland and he worked on the Swift stand at the 1903 Crystal Palace Automobile Show. He became manager of the finishing and testing department, took part in many reliability trials and won seven gold medals. While working for Swift he took out two patents, one in 1906 and the other in 1911, both for improvements to carburettors for internal combustion engines. When he left Swift in June 1912 he was presented with a gold watch.

On his return to New Zealand he became foreman at P. H. Vickery Motor Works, Invercargill. This was one of the first garages in New Zealand to recondition motors and Every also gave evening lectures on car mechanics to drivers at the Southland Technical College. In 1918 he moved to Carterton and set up his own motor garage which he ran until he retired in 1954.

Many motorcycles are known by the maker of the frame and running parts rather than the engine maker. Marques such as HRD, Zenith, Brough Superior, Rex Acme, James, Francis-Barnet and Excelsior all had engines by other makers. In 1902 the first Triumph had a Minerva engine. It is quite reasonable to claim that R.H. Every’s motor bicycle was New Zealand’s very first B.S.A. motorcycle. But was it the first motorcycle constructed in New Zealand?

The October 1899 issue of The New Zealand Wheelman had a headline which read “The Pioneer Motor Cyclist of New Zealand.” This was the report of an interview with William Acton-Adams who had just returned from Paris with a “motorcycle”. It is only near the end of the article that it becomes apparent that the Comiot he brought back was a tricycle.13

In June 1900 there were brief reports in Auckland newspapers of “a motor cycle that goes humming along like an oil launch on wheels”14 but further reading reveals that this was the De Dion and Bouton tricycle owned by Service and Henning.15 In late September 1901 Percy Skeats of the Auckland cycle firm Skeates and Boekaert, returned to New Zealand with one American and two English motorcycle but these were complete machines.

Cecil Walkden Wood of Timaru claimed to have constructed a petrol engine in 1897 and then “applied his motor to a bicycle, quite possibly creating the first motorcycle in New Zealand and apparently managed to run it for about 100 yards.”16 However there are no contemporary newspaper reports or photographs of this vehicle even though Wood’s later vehicles were reported on and photographed. With his “motor-cycle engine Wood at first experienced great difficulty with the accumulator and coil, but this was mastered, and the first engine attached to a cycle was successfully placed on the road, on 20 May, 1900. He then built a three wheeled motor-car, with tiller steering wheel, which was first run in Timaru on 4 June, 1901”.17

Wood used newspapers to promote his business such as when he built a tandem and later a bicycle for a customer who weighed 127 kilograms. He imported a novel replacement for a bicycle bell powered by an air pump driven by the front wheel. The noise was supposed to be loud enough to “warn a dead cow to get out of the way.”

A search of Papers Past gives February 1897 as the first time Wood is mentioned in relation to motor vehicles when he was “looking forward to the arrival of motor vehicles, and he intends to undertake the fitting up and repair of the new means of locomotion.”18

The next mention is not until July 1901 when Wood displayed a working petrol engine he had built at his Tourist Cycle Works in Timaru. Both the South Canterbury Times (20 July 1901, p.2) and Timaru Herald (20 July 1901, p.2) reported that:

A large crowd was attracted to the window of Mr C. W. Wood’s cycle establishment yesterday to view a very interesting working model of a gas engine shown there, and very complimentary remarks were made regarding the perfection and smoothness of its working. The engine stands about 14 inches high by 19 inches long, both measurements including a 14-inch fly-wheel. The fittings are perfectly and neatly made, the workmanship put into them being most painstaking and delicate. The cylinder has a two-inch bore, and allows a four-inch stroke for the piston-rod. ….. Mr Wood intends also to build another model, for attachment to a bicycle, and promises that at no very distant date a “motor cycle” will be seen on our streets.

It is highly likely that the engine described in this report, from its size and the 14 inch flywheel, is the engine in the well-known photo of C. W. Wood on a three wheeled, tiller steered vehicle outside the Tourist Cycle Works.