Stuff has partnered with Top Shelf productions to bring you a new NZ On Air-funded series about New Zealand's unique historic places and efforts to preserve and share them. Here's this week's story of Heritage Rescue.

The Whangaroa County Museum – located in Kaeo, Northland – is custodian to several artefacts dating back to earliest interactions between Māori and Pākehā. Here in this small museum, with a fully-voluntary staff of locals, are objects that tell the story of the burning of the sailing ship Boyd in 1809.

The conventional story is that the brigantine ship sailed into Whangaroa Harbour from Sydney Cove and was attacked as an act of revenge after the ship's captain mistreated a chief, Te Ara of Ngāti Uru. It has been billed as one of the bloodiest murders of Pākehā in the nation's history.

SUPPLIED The blowing up of the Boyd.

Only it's a not a history everyone agrees with.

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"For a long time, New Zealand's human history was told from the perspective of Pākehā memories, interpretations and what early traders, missionaries, and settlers thought important to write down," says Brigid Gallagher, heritage expert and presenter of TV show Heritage Rescue.

SUPPLIED Diver Ewan Stevenson explains the state of the wreck to Brigid Gallagher.

As part of the second series of Heritage Rescue on Choice TV, Gallagher and her team will help the museum re-present the story of the Boyd.

The new display about the Boyd at the local museum, designed by curator Rose Evans, will not only show the beauty of the artefacts belonging to the Boyd, but also address this issue of how the story has been traditionally told.

"Getting to grips with the years leading up to 1809, from the time of first Māori-Pākehā contact, was essential to the retelling of this story," says Gallagher.

Gallagher and Stevenson on the site of the Boyd.

That's why Gallagher set off into the community and talked to a cross section of locals and experts with different perspectives.

As part of her fact-finding, Gallagher took Ewan Stevenson – one of the only people to have explored the wreck – back to the site of the conflict where the sunken Boyd now rests. Stevenson shares his awe-inspiring experience of diving this now-tapu historic site in the episode.

"History has often repeated the story as one of bloodshed, massacre and cannibalism. But is history really that simple? I don't think so," says Gallagher.

As part of the second series of Heritage Rescue on Choice TV, Gallagher and her team will help the museum re-present the story of the Boyd.

Deidre Brown, Associate Professor at the University of Auckland is a descendent of a local chief Te Pahi. Te Pahi tried to intervene and save the crew of the Boyd before the ship sank. "He understood what the repercussions were going to be for the Bay of Islands."

The rangatira's efforts to save the crew were misinterpreted by the Europeans and Te Pahi wrongly blamed. Pākehā whalers tracked Te Pahi to his home in the Bay of Islands and took revenge, killing the chief and 60 of his people.

SUPPLIED Gallagher watches the eco sounder to see the shipwreck on screen.

"I can understand how horrible it must have been but what you've got to understand is why it happened." Local artist and educator Frances Goulton tells Gallagher that the whole tragic incident was spurred by the arrival of another ship, The Commerce, a year earlier.

The ship carried diseases, which killed a large number of Māori. Ngāti Uru thought they had been cursed.

"It was still raw," says Goulton. "The sight of the next ship coming in and the memory of the last ship. People call that superstition but it's just the way we understand the world."

SUPPLIED The Whangaroa Harbour and the site of the Boyd wreck.

Instead of presenting this cultural understanding, there is a large painting hanging in the Waitangi Museum which "portrays us to the whole world as murderers and killers," says Goulton.

It's these cultural sensitivities that the Heritage Rescue team hoped to address as they overhauled Whangaroa Museum.

"Working through the evidence of the Boyd incident and talking to individual descendants was rewarding and offered a huge amount of learning," says Gallagher – learning that will now form part of the museum's new display for the future.

Heritage Rescue, funded by NZ On Air screens Saturday 7:30 pm on Choice TV.