The Enderby Settlement

by The Enderby Settlement (epub)

  From Erebus Cove, the site of the Enderby Settlement, named like Terror Cove after Ross’s ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, the harbour narrows into the steep-sided inlet of Laurie Harbour, cutting deep into the island. Ross had noted that ‘after passing Ocean and Rose’s Islands, a ship may anchor in perfect safety in any part, but the most convenient will be found to be between these islands and Erebus Cove, where abundance of wood and water may be obtained.’13 Of Laurie Harbour, he commented that it ‘is well calculated for the location of an establishment for the prosecution of the whale fishery; many black and several sperm whales came into the harbour whilst we were there, and from such a situation the fishery might be pursued with very great advantage’.14 Ross had referred to the harbour as Rendezvous Harbour, but Enderby renamed it Port Ross ‘in compliment to our distinguished navigator’.

  Terror Cove, the next bay north of the Enderby Settlement, has a double bay backed by rata forest and flat land similar to the settlement’s Davis Bay and Erebus Cove. The two coves were named after Sir James Clark Ross’s ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.

  On an overcast summer’s day, the brilliant red of the rata in flower (on the shore of Terror Cove) looks almost drab, its tropical brilliance hidden until the sun shines.

  Ross’s suggestion of Laurie Harbour for the settlement site was quickly abandoned because of its steep sides and the force of the prevailing westerly winds that sweep down it. Instead, some hundred acres of more gradually rising land sheltered by Beacon Point and by inland hills was chosen, near the north bank of Laurie Harbour where it widens into Port Ross. The site comprised Davis Bay, a small peninsula and Erebus Cove. What appeared to be fertile and usable land lay towards Terror Cove and beyond, to the north.

  Enderby recalls:

  It is impossible to describe the confusion and excitement attending the first formation of a new settlement, where there was not a spot on which to pitch a tent; the land had to be cleared of timber of a very hard description, and to be levelled, which was by no means an easy task, preparatory to the erection of the storehouse and dwellings, which had been taken out in frame; these, with a miscellaneous collection of stores and goods, had to be taken out of the ships, to afford the means of getting at others stowed below them, and of sorting them, and landed, with great difficulty, at such places as were most contiguous to the buildings in the course of erection.15

  Site of the Company’s settlement and intended town (colour added later).

  From Abstract of Reports

  One of Enderby’s more pleasant tasks, as the chaos of arrival settled in to some sort of order, was to conduct the marriage of 25-year-old George Cook, first mate of the Brisk, and 21-year-old Matilda Fawkes, a daughter of Gloucestershire tenant farmers, who is thought to have been a maid in Enderby’s household at Greenwich and had probably come out on the Samuel Enderby.16 They were the first to be married at the Auckland Islands, on board the Brisk on 22 December 1849.17

  George and Matilda Cook, the first to be married at the Enderby Settlement aboard the Brisk, on 22 December 1849. It is thought Matilda was employed in Enderby’s Greenwich household. George, the Brisk’s first mate and later the colony’s ships’ husband, had a high-born Maori mother in the Bay of Islands and acted as the colony’s interpreter.

  Courtesy descendant Des Price

  George Cook had an interesting background. His father, who was English, had served with the British garrison holding Napoleon on St Helena, and came to New Zealand on a whaling voyage in 1822. At the Bay of Islands he met George’s mother Tiraha, a close relative of Tamati Waka Nene, one of the great Maori chiefs of the North. George Cook (or Hori Kuku), born at Orongo Bay near Russell in 1825, was the first of their twelve children: five boys followed by seven girls. The affinity with the sea that began with the father continued with the sons; whaling was in their blood.

  On 27 December the third of the first three ships, the Fancy, under Captain Davidson, finally made Port Ross. William Mackworth, Enderby’s young Assistant Commissioner, was on board. Mackworth describes their near disastrous arrival at the Auckland Islands in a letter to his mother.18

  My beloved Mother –

  It has pleased that Almighty Protector, to whose care I daily commit you all, to guide me in safety to this distant land, and to give me health and strength to get through my most difficult duties. On 27th Dec. after a long voyage in which our two great achievements were, killing the first whale in the Company’s service, and keeping ourselves alive, we entered Port Ross and were boarded immediately by his excellency the Governor.

  Four months and a half on board the ‘Fancy’ crowded to excess and battling against the furies of the sea, I shall never forget, nor think of without shuddering at the recollection. The patient resignation, particularly on the part of the women, at a time when we had good cause to doubt our making the island at all, I shall also never forget. Here let me relate an event which occurred on the morning of our sighting of the island.

  For a long time before we reached the longitude of this place, we suffered severely from gales of wind, and for the last two or three days were visited by mists, and were consequently unable to obtain satisfactory observations – our only plan then was to run only by day (knowing ourselves to be in about the right latitude) and to lay to at night, with the fear (not pleasing) of drifting on a lee shore. At six o’clock on the morning of the 27th Dec. completely exhausted with watching, and dreading the probable fact of our having run past the island altogether, knowing how small was the chance of the ‘Fancy’ ever beating back against the prevailing winds of this latitude, I endeavoured to resign myself into the hands of an all-wise God, but to entreat him for the sake of you dear ones to hear and help me. My ‘Amen’ was uttered, and at that instant the shout of ‘Land oh!!’ was roared from the mast head and flew through the ship – the mist had partially cleared and shewed us our position; we were just running past the southern point of Adam’s Island and would have been altogether out of sight in an hour had it not been seen. Let any one who doubts the Omnipresence of God hear this.

  By the time Mackworth arrived, three weeks of hard work had transformed the densely canopied forest – land ‘where there was not a spot on which to pitch a tent’19 – into a raw clearing that was being extended by axemen and sawyers, with the help of Maori labourers. Stumps had been removed from building sites, and work was well under way on several prefabricated cottages and two or three larger buildings, in spite of delays caused by bad weather and the difficulty of making firm, level foundations among hard, twisted rata roots and soft mud interlaced with root fibres.

  The Manning Portable Colonial Cottage had already been widely used in the new Australian colonies of New South Wales and Victoria. Wall panels slotted in between grooved posts bolted to a continuous floor plate. Floor joists, tongue-and-groove boards, rafters and beams were all precut and numbered, with weatherboards to be fine-trimmed at the site. Windows were already glazed; and windowframes, doors and doorframes were prepainted.20 Tarred roofing felt was used for insulation and to make the buildings waterproof until the wooden shingles were nailed on. Dressers, food safes, tables and furniture had been designed to pack inside each other to save space in the ships’ holds.21

  With all three ships at anchor and the colonists able to go ashore – although they still had to sleep on board – New Year’s Day celebrations took place on 1 January 1850: halfway through the century and halfway around the world. Enderby had already given his ‘suitable address’ to the first lot of settlers on stepping ashore, but after everyone’s safe arrival this was the ideal occasion for him to be formally read into office by Mackworth proclaiming the Royal Charter granted by Queen Victoria, appointing him Lieutenant Governor of the Auckland Islands. Enderby would almost certainly have worn his full Windsor uniform, with cocked hat, heavily gold-embroidered jacket, white breeches, silk hose and ceremonial sword. He seldom wore this full regalia, apart from rare formal occasions and for conducting the occasiona
l wedding ceremony; his everyday preference was for an informal shooting jacket, moleskin trousers and raincape.

  Settlement at Port Ross, Auckland Islands, by Charles Barraud, 1850.

  Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand, Ref. 1992-0035-1650

  McLaren, quoting the not always reliable Carrick, tells us that ‘the settlement was christened “Hardwicke” in honour of the noble Earl, the Governor of the Company’. But in fact the official name of Hardwicke proposed in London was hardly ever used.22 Correspondence from Enderby was always headed ‘Port Ross’; and mention is made of only one cottage being built within the site surveyed for Hardwicke town, at the north end of the settlement.23 Eventually there may have been four houses there, but they were very much on the fringe of the settlement.

  The fact that such a small whaling base, with a population of well under a hundred, had the status of a Crown colony emphasised the importance attached to restoring the prosperity of the British whaling industry. But there was more to it than whaling: from the start, the venture had been planned as a balanced colonial society; and Enderby saw Port Ross as having the potential to become a thriving settlement. Agriculture and market gardening would make it not only self-supporting, but a regular port of call for the supply, refitting and watering of a growing volume of merchant shipping from the Australian colonies to Britain, by way of what seemed certain to become one of the world’s great trading routes.

  The first three ships had therefore arrived with ‘a sufficient number of male adults for the necessary establishment on shore’:

  A general Assistant to the Commissioner [William Mackworth];

  Three Surgeons; the services of one of whom are to cease on the expiration of the voyage [leaving Dr Rodd and Dr Hallett];

  A Clerk and Accountant [Valentine Smith];

  A Surveyor [George Bond];

  A Storekeeper [Thomas Goodger];

  Two Boatmen;

  Five Coopers, Shipwrights, Carpenters, and general workers in wood;

  Two Smiths, and general workers in iron;

  Three Bricklayers, Masons, and general workers in stone;

  Sixteen general Servants, Agriculturists, and Labourers, many of whom possessed a knowledge of various kinds of handicraft;

  In all, (including the Commissioner,) thirty-six male adults, with sixteen women, and fourteen children.24

  Not specified, but included among the ‘general Servants’, were Thomas Younger the civil engineer and Edward Gillett the harbour pilot; and among the women was Sarah Cripps, the nurse and midwife. The Directors of the Southern Whale Fishery Company recorded a total of 66. This, however, does not tally with Enderby’s lesser total of ‘51 persons, including women and children’, given in a letter to Earl Grey in February of 185025 –probably because of dismissals in the first weeks and the resignation or departure of disenchanted settlers who had left the Company’s service. The most notable omission was that of clergyman: Enderby, who had several volumes of sermons and religious works in his library, intended to take on or supervise this duty himself until a clergyman could be appointed.

  The Auckland Island group, just 234 square miles (606 km2) in size and 298 miles (480 km) south of New Zealand, was the newest, smallest and most remote Crown colony in the British Empire. By comparison the Falkland Islands, 248.5 miles (400 km) off the coast of Argentina, were 20 times the size.26 In the scale of things, the Auckland Islands, which were either unmarked or incorrectly located on most charts, were little more than specks in the vast expanse of the Southern Ocean.

  Although the Fancy had arrived on 27 December, Mackworth does not begin his diary until the first of January with the words, ‘On the arrival of the Fancy in Port Ross I found the Samuel Enderby and the Brisk at Anchor and lost no time in enquiring into the state of affairs on board of them.’ It is unfortunate that because of pressure of work his first entries are exceedingly brief and give very little description of the colony’s early days; they are almost entirely confined to administrative matters. As a daily work record the diary was open for Enderby to consult at any time, and Enderby refers more than once to ‘Mr Mackworth’s journal’ in his early reports to the Southern Whale Fishery Company’s directors back in London.27

  The climate soon proved to be predominantly wet and miserable. In rare moments of sunshine, however, the rata trees were transformed into a forest of almost tropical-looking brilliance, their dense canopy resembling close-packed heads of scarlet cauliflowers. It was easy to forget, as the forest came alive with the flutelike notes of tui and bellbird, that such an impenetrable canopy was due to the trees’ defence against the wind. Beyond the rata a similarly dense scrub rose to subalpine herbfields and gaunt grey rock.

  For the first week of January the weather was particularly foul and unsummerlike. In spite of this, Mackworth seemed determined to make up for the inactivity and frustrations of the voyage. Alarmed at the general state of confusion on board the ships and ashore, and after consultation with the Governor, he had, within the first few days of his arrival, ‘undertaken the whole management of affairs on shore’. He set up, under Enderby’s authority, a court of magistrates comprising himself and Captain Henderson of the Samuel Enderby and Captain Tapsell of the Brisk. He ‘put a stop to an excessive supply of spirituous liquor to the men and started a regular sale of limited quantities’; and he saw to the issue of ‘an immediate and general pay’ as, with nothing to spend money on anyway, nobody had been paid during the many weeks they had been at sea. He gave orders that no boat was to leave any ship without its master’s consent, and that ‘every man intoxicated and making himself a nuisance or rendering himself incapable therefrom of performing his duty to the Company be fined at the discretion of the Magistrates’.28 Mackworth also recommended that Captain Davidson of the Fancy be dismissed from the Company’s service immediately ‘on account of gross misconduct’ – to which Enderby promptly agreed, for on sailing from New Plymouth the Fancy had proved unseaworthy and had had to unload much of its cargo and trim the bottom of the hold with 8000 bricks before reloading the prefabricated buildings and other goods it was carrying,29 and the voyage itself had ended in near disaster.

  Rata trees in flower give a deceptively tropical look to the island’s subantarctic climate. Visiting British naval captains were greatly impressed by the rata, ‘which was in full bloom, and exceeded in brilliancy and extent anything of the sort they had seen before’.

  Enderby, Abstract of Reports from the Commissioner of the Southern Whale Fishery Company to the Directors

  The melodious calls of birds such as the bellbird would have greeted the settlers each morning.

  Besides organising help for the builders and with landing stores, Mackworth’s job involved disciplining troublemakers and men who refused to perform their duties. As there was no jail, prisoners were put in Ngatere’s custody at the Ocean Point pa, some 5 kilometres (3 miles) from the settlement on the headland now named Tucker Point, facing Ocean Island.30 In addition, there was an urgent need to house the women and children ashore: ‘The people are complaining bitterly of the wet on board ship and there are now many cases of sickness the consequences of wet weather and bad accommodation.’31

  Back in England, Enderby had proposed ‘that the preliminary expedition should be confined to the pioneers, who should prepare the settlement for the reception of the women and children’. They would follow later, so that the first whaling voyages could go ahead immediately, and not be delayed because there was no accommodation ashore. But the board of directors had disagreed, and passed a resolution that the married men should take their wives and children out with them. This necessitated greatly increased space for accommodation on board the first three ships, as well as the additional stores and prefabricated buildings required.32 The Samuel Enderby was 395 tons and the Fancy 321 tons33 – both vessels considerably larger than Enderby’s ideal of 250 tons for the type of whaling he proposed.34 Only the Brisk, at 265 tons, which Enderby planned should go whaling firs
t, was close to his ideal size and ‘not lumbered with many stores or passengers’.35 Even so, the ‘enormous quantity of bricks’ that it carried had to be unloaded first, with only one longboat available for the job.36

  During Mackworth’s early meetings with Matioro and Ngatere, in whom he ‘found much intelligence’, he reinforced Enderby’s explanation that they were now under British rule. Possibly to underline his own authority, he ‘made the Native Chiefs clearly understand that they have no claim whatever to any land on these islands’, and stressed that their pigs, along with those already on the islands, ‘are now the property of the Company and that they are to capture none without orders’.37 He had a frustrating interview with Ngatere over the construction of a sheepfold on Enderby Island, but this was probably due to a language difficulty, as they got on well and Mackworth had a high opinion of both chiefs. For their part, the chiefs seemed anxious to cooperate. In fact Matioro ‘to show his zeal in the Company’s service, had hung no less than seven of his dogs for killing one of their sheep’.38

  About this time, a fight erupted between two rival Maori factions to the north of the settlement, which caused great concern among the colonists. Matioro’s wife had been told that a cousin, Toenga, had killed, cooked and eaten a tame pig named after her baby son. This insult infuriated Matioro. Toenga, jealous of Matioro’s influence, then armed himself and, with a handful of others, attacked Matioro and killed two of his Moriori slaves. Matioro then shot and killed one of Toenga’s raiding party, causing them to flee. Interestingly, both sides entrenched themselves during this incident, at a time when trench warfare was unknown to Europeans. Toenga later attacked Matioro’s old father-in-law, Patukumikumi, who, with two of his daughters, was on one of the small islands in the harbour. But the old man shot a hole in the raiders’ boat as it reached the shore, and Toenga was again driven off. In fear of his life by now, and ashamed of fighting his cousins, Toenga is thought to have boarded a passing vessel, along with his wife, and been taken back to the Chatham Islands.39