Hi Bitzer1,
I am inclined to think that the 1904 William GOSNELL (and the others who appear in the various Police Gazette entries) is your man despite the difference in height, etc. There can't have been that many men of that name.
Separately, I have stumbled across an article in The New Zealand Genealogist which discusses the arrival and life aboard the Oxford on its 1883 voyage. Several articles were published in the Taranaki Herald during that year and should be available on Papers Past, vis:
Monday, 29 January 1883
Tuesday 20 February
Wednesday 4 April
Friday 27 April
Tuesday 24 July
Almost daily updates throughout August
Tuesday 2 October
Tuesday 23 October, personal recollections of Mary Jane MELVILLE as told to her grandchildren.
Source: The New Zealand Genealogist Vol. 32 No. 268 March/April 2001, ‘The voyage of the ‘Oxford’ to New Zealand in 1883’, pp. 101-103.
