Serving personnel from a Royal Navy ship have for the first time visited a battle site where 42 of their compatriots died almost 180 years ago.

The sailors from the HMS Spey, a British offshore patrol vessel currently in Auckland, travelled to the Far North on Monday to pay their respects at St Michael’s Anglican Church in Ngāwhā, just east of Kaikohe.

Raima Redden, who coordinated the church’s recent restoration, said it was the first time since the Battle of Ōhaeawai in 1845 that a Royal Navy ship had sent a group to the memorial site.

The dead British troops were originally buried in a mass grave by their campsite, near the old Ōhaeawai School, after the battle. Years later, in 1872, Ngāti Rangi chief Heta Te Haara had them exhumed so they could be given a Christian burial in the grounds of the then newly built church.

Redden said the sailors joined members of the local hapū Ngāti Rangi in the church as the names of the dead were read out in a ceremony she said was a poignant reminder of the area’s history and deeply moving for all involved.

After the visit to St Michael’s, the Royal Navy personnel, accompanied by staff from the British High Commission in Wellington, toured the battle site and the original location of the mass grave before having lunch at the old school, now restored and used as a community centre.

“As they walked to the original grave site, a light rain fell and haukainga [home people] shared the story that our tūpuna [ancestors] would have said those are tears of joy from the fallen soldiers interred in Ngāwhā,” she said.

The Royal Navy visitors then paid their respects to the officers interred at St John the Baptist Church in Waimate North.

A crest of the HMS Spey was gifted to Ngāti Rangi to honour the occasion.