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THE HIJACK OF BOEING ONE © 1988 - 2007 J Smyth / All Rights Reserved
Author's notes on the sample excerpts from the book... ________________________________________________
As you can see from the above quotes from my friends at the Department of Conservation in which they extol the virtues of my research and writing, this work has been a long time in the making. For me it started back in 1988. Early that year I read a story in the now defunct Auckland Sun about John Earnshaw, a film maker who was shooting a documentary on the first aeroplane designed and built by William Edward Boeing and who was about to start some excavations at the North Head Historic Reserve in Devonport Auckland to open up old sealed off tunnels and retrieve the first Boeing from where it had been entombed since the mid 1920s.
This caught my imagination. At the time I was working as a commercial photographer having graduated to the largely mind numbing world of advertising and PR photography from the far more interesting one of photojournalism. I had also been an aircraft nut since childhood and so I wrote to Earnshaw explaining that I was fascinated by his project and perhaps I could assist. We met at his Birkenhead home shortly thereafter where I put to him a proposal that if he let me photograph his project to make a 'coffee table book', in return I would do all the still photography for his documentary for free. The deal was struck.
Earnshaw informed me that the previous year (1987) he had signed contracts with the New Zealand Government that allowed him to locate and retrieve the first Boeing and other historical artefacts from tunnels under North Head and that his project would be proceeding very shortly. The contracts were clear: One, a “Licence Agreement”, permitted the excavations at the Historic Reserve. The Second, a “Sponsorship Agreement” clearly stated the Government's wish to get the job done and to pay John Earnshaw's film Company, Mallard Productions Ltd., to film the NZ Army undertaking the excavation work. The final contract, the “Sale and Purchase Agreement”, set up a partnership between Earnshaw and the Government providing for a joint ownership of all the historic artefacts retrieved from the tunnels.
The contracts had been negotiated by the Hon. Jim McLay, a long standing and respected member of Parliament who was of the firm belief that Earnshaw, who had been researching the project since the late 1970s, deserved to be generously rewarded for his work as it was of ultimate benefit to New Zealand and its heritage. The contracts were signed on behalf of the New Zealand Government by Secretary of Defence, Denis McLean and by Denis Marshall, The Minister of Conservation. Would it therefore be reasonable to assume that the contracts would be executed honourably without malice or machinations on behalf of the Crown? I thought so and so in June 1988 I turned up at North Head thinking I was about to start a short term project that should be all over and done with within 12months with the result that John Earnshaw would have a fascinating documentary film and I an equally fascinating coffee table book to go along with the film.
Boy, was I naive. Which brings me to the quote from Thomas Harris (from his book “Hanniball”) that appears at the beginning of the book. I had anticipated having copy and photographs ready for a 'coffee table book' sometime in late 1989 or early 1990, but six years later, having observed the Departments of Conservation and Defence engaging in some fairly questionable activities in respect of what one would normally consider 'fair play', I found myself involved in High Court litigation that dragged on from 1996 until 2003 resulting in a very questionable legal outcome that had as little to do with 'Natural Justice' as did Hitler's invasion of Poland.
The coffee table book full of photographs and a bit of descriptive hyperbole became a full on book with pages full of writing and everything! It became the story of how a film maker's legitimate project was high-jacked by agents of the New Zealand Government and sold out to a rival film company. How, when the film maker, after years of abuse and duress finally took a legitimate claim of breach of contract to the Courts and won, he was set up and then set upon vindictively and vexatiously and, with a campaign of lies and misrepresentations, was unscrupulously driven into ill health and barely survived an attempt by the New Zealand Defence Force to take his home from him and throw him and his family onto the street.
John Earnshaw, the protagonist of my story, was a sacrificial victim of New Zealand's infamous 'tall poppy syndrome’; the ‘Great Kiwi Knocking Machine’. But he didn't go willingly to the scaffold; he went loudly proclaiming his 'rights'; 'rights' being a very ephemeral thing as it turns out. Many people lost their innocence in the process of his ignominious legal assassination. Other participants in the story apparently had no innocence to begin with and lost little or nothing – so far that is. What ‘goes around’, I have discovered, has an alarming tendency to ‘come around’ - as is perhaps prophetically referred to in the opening quotes from Dept. of Conservation memos (and there's a lot more of those, trust me on that).
So while this is a ‘boy’s own’ story about the search for a famous flying machine and hidden tunnels and all, it is also a story about the loss of innocence, the transient quality of human nature, the pliable quality of human rights and the infamous behaviour of certain public servants who clearly forgot that they were servants of the public.
Jon Smyth Tuesday 07 March 2007 |
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For layout details of the of the book on which the feature film would be based... |
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To read the author’s preface from the book.. |
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To view some excepts from the book. |
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“Smyth explained that he's now writing a book about how the bureaucracy had dealt with Earnshaw and the North Head quest. Given his penchant for selective use of facts, a book about his dealings with the Government, the Navy, Lands and Surveys, Hauraki Gulf Maritime Park and the Department of Conservation could be a bit of a nightmare.” Dr. Graeme Campbell, Regional Conservator, Auckland Conservancy 05 March 1992. Department of Conservation inter-departmental Memo. To: Bill Mansfield Director General, cc: John Daniels Historic Resources
"The statements by Jon Smyth about his intentions to publish material are also disturbing but not a surprise I suppose". John Daniels, Director Historic Resources, Dept. of Conservation, 11 March 1992. Memo to Dr. Graeme Campbell issued in the aftermath of a failed DoC attempt to secretly usurp and plagiarise John Earnshaw's 'The Search For Boeing One” project.
“At the recent meeting Mr Smyth explained that he is now writing a book about how the bureaucracy had dealt with the whole matter. Given his penchant for selective use of facts about his dealings with the Government, the Navy, Lands & Survey, Hauraki Gulf Maritime Park, and the Department of Conservation, this could prove to be a problem". Alan Edmonds, Assistant Directory General, Dept. of Conservation Letter to the Minister of Conservation dated 10 March 1992. |
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THE HIJACK OF BOEING ONE / www.boeingone.org © 1988 - 2007 J Smyth / All Rights Reserved The promotional excerpts on this website and in the book promotion document MAY NOT be reproduced in whole or in part in any way whatsoever without the written permission of the author. Contact: J Smyth P O Box 60630 Titirangi 0642 Waitakere City ~info@boeingone.org |
