into the pā. There it was hoisted, upside down, and at half-mast high, below the Māori flag, which was a kākahu (Māori cloak). This insulting display of the Union Jack was the cause of the disaster which ensued. Infuriated by the insult to the Union Jack, Colonel Despard ordered an assault upon the pā the same day. The attack was directed to the section of the pā where the angle of the palisade allowed a double flank from which the defenders of the pā could fire at the attackers; the attack was a reckless endeavour. The British persisted in their attempts to storm the unbreached palisades and five to seven minutes later 33 were dead and 66 injured. The casualties included Captain Grant of the 58th Regiment and Lieutenant George Phillpotts of . The scalp of Lieutenant Phillpotts was brought to the tohunga Te Atua Wera, who made divinations and composed a song foretelling victory against the British. The casualties were buried at St. John the Baptist Church at Waimate North. Shaken by the loss of a third of his troops, Despard decided to abandon the siege. However, his Māori allies contested this decision. Tāmati Wāka Nene persuaded Despard to wait for a few more days. More ammunition and supplies were brought in and the shelling continued. On the morning of 8 July the pā was found to have been abandoned, the occupants having disappeared in the night. When they had a chance to examine it, the British officers found it to be even stronger than they had feared. The defenders of the pā had four iron cannons on ship-carriages including a carronade that was loaded with a bullock-chain, and fired at close quarters at the attacking soldiers. The colonial forces captured these cannons, one of which had been destroyed by a shot from a British cannon. Captain William Biddlecomb Marlow, RE, noted in relation to his drawing, Plate IV, of Ōhaeawai pā: The dotted lines denote rows of fences composed of trees deeply sunk in the ground, between 9 and 15 inches thick, bound close together by a strong native line or rope at the top and bottom: upon the outer row of trees a screen between 4 and 6 inches thick, and 8 and 9 feet high, was formed from a native plant called the New Zealand flax, which is exceedingly tough, and at a distance capable of