The Enderby Settlement

by The Enderby Settlement (epub)

  Port Ross, 27 February 1852.

  Lieutenant-governor7

  The same day, Enderby instructed Captain Dobson of the Lord Nelson, who was about to depart on a whaling voyage, to deliver a letter addressed to the Postmaster-general in London, at the first port at which he called where there was a post office.8 This was countered by Captain Dobson being forbidden to convey any mail, despatch or letter without specific orders from the Special Commissioners or Mackworth.9 Later, perhaps forgetting or overlooking the fact he had first made his threat to ruin the Company in a much wider context before instructing Captain Dobson to deliver a letter, Enderby may have tried to water down his threat by saying that to accomplish this ‘ruin’ of the Company, he had ‘endeavoured to compel the master of one of the Company’s whaling ships to carry a mail … by which act I intended he should go into port, which would ruin the voyage’10 – ruin it because the ship would not have been able to go directly whaling.

  The American explorer Morrell described the west coast of Auckland Island as ‘a perpendicular bluff iron bound coast’. The Invercauld was wrecked on this coast in 1864, the General Grant in 1866 and the Anjou in 1905. The remnants of one of these, with anchor, was thought for some time to be the General Grant. It lies in surprisingly shallow water at the base of these cliffs, at the right of the photo.

  Throughout these manoeuverings it seems that Mackworth retained some sympathy for Enderby. After they had talked he appeared hurt that ‘Mr Enderby after throwing to the dogs my advice offered as a Friend on several occasions expressed to me his determination to use his utmost efforts to ruin the Company should the present course pursued towards him by the Company’s Representatives be continued.’ This is the second occasion Mackworth mentions Enderby’s threat, although once again including its all-important proviso. Before the Special Commissioners’ arrival, Mackworth had settled into a good working relationship with the Governor, which, in spite of occasional friction over responsibilities and discipline, had been progressing to his advantage. Now, the situation was becoming increasingly difficult, and his loyalties were clearly divided.11

  Enderby told Mackworth that he required the prayer for a Lieutenant Governor to be read at the next church service. Mackworth’s response was to not take the service.12

  Two days later, a large labour force helped Enderby and the Special Commissioners to change residences without incident. Enderby no doubt felt that sufficient protest had been made through his latest public notice, to which they had predictably made no response.

  While Enderby was settling into his new quarters, articles were signed for the Brisk’s crew, and orders were given that it was to sail in two days’ time. The Brisk had a particularly troublesome record, and its crew had always been a source of disturbance while on shore leave, with rowdy visits to Matioro’s pa – which is probably how Robert Reuben Bishop, a former seaman on the Brisk, had first become acquainted with Hannah Tawerangi, the daughter of a lesser Maori chief, Koro. They had been married by Governor Enderby shortly before the arrival of the Special Commissioners.13 Bishop then refused to go to sea again, and Enderby had been, to quote Munce, ‘directed to employ him no longer in the Company Service’.14 This happened the day before George Cook – for whom Bishop was probably working – was relieved of his duties as ships’ husband. By some sort of compromise Bishop must have gone onto part-time employment, because Mackworth noted, on 3 March, that in once again refusing to sail in the Brisk, Bishop had ‘thrown himself out of regular employment, and was to work two days a week for his rations’.15

  Mackworth then increased the salaries of the storekeepers, Tom Goodger and his assistant Daniel Collins, to £150 and £60 per annum respectively, which indicates that the Special Commissioners, who must have sanctioned the increase, cannot have been as dissatisfied with the state of the Company’s stores as they had led Enderby to believe in their charges against him.

  At four o’clock the Brisk was ready to sail to bring back the oiling gang from Macquarie Island when 13 of its crew, the worse for drink, refused to go on board, and forcibly freed a seaman, Daniel King, from the custody of the constables. When Dundas and Preston attempted to intervene they were surrounded by a hostile group of sailors and were in danger of being assaulted. One of the seamen referred to Enderby’s notice of 24 February and exclaimed that they could now do as they liked, as he had relinquished his authority.16 With the death of seaman Downs, hostility towards the Special Commissioners was at its height and affecting the whole colony.

  Enderby claimed it was the Special Commissioners’ infringement of his liquor restrictions which had led to the crew’s intoxication, and that while the men were in such a state Dundas and Preston had been emphatic that the ship should sail; but that when they sent for the chief mate, ‘he objected on the grounds that the people were ashore intoxicated and not in fit condition to get the ship under weigh. Messrs. Dundas and Preston nevertheless insisted on his obeying their orders, and attempted to put him in irons for refusing, when the ship’s crew rescued him from them.’17

  Under normal circumstances Mackworth would have mustered landsmen to help the constables, and had the leaders of the mob arrested by force. But because the Brisk was about to leave for Macquarie Island, there was the risk, with the men in such a belligerent mood, that such a step might delay or even put off the vessel’s sailing altogether. Their ringleader Daniel King and others would have to be dealt with later, once they had sobered up.

  By noon the following day the Brisk was once again ready to sail, when Daniel King, in a highly volatile mood, got into the pilot’s boat in defiance of Captain Freeman’s orders, and called on the crew to join him. Most of the crew did so, deserting the ship with him. Mackworth does not say what steps were taken to deal with the men or Daniel King, but the next day, 6 March, the Brisk finally left for Macquarie Island, ‘strongly manned and well found in every way’, as Mackworth recorded with some relief and perhaps a touch of disbelief.18

  After it had sailed, to Enderby’s and everyone’s dismay – although they must have known it was coming – Mackworth ‘made known to Mr Munce and through him to the Company’s servants generally the Special Commissioners’ intention to remove the Company’s Establishment from these Islands’.19

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Rights and Wrongs of Passage

  The conflict between Enderby, the Special Commissioners and Mackworth now entered a new phase. Enderby, bitterly disappointed that his dreams of a successful whaling station and colony had been so publicly dashed, made his strongest attack yet on Mackworth for his divided loyalties:

  Sir,

  Having appointed you a magistrate, I had a right to expect from you assistance to enable me to support my authority, as the representative of Her Majesty on these Islands; nevetheless, you have not only failed to afford me of late any assistance, but have personally ceased to pay me any respect.

  You disobeyed a written order from me (as Lieutenant-governor, and having a right to act as coroner), not to inter the body of Downs, a seaman, until I had obtained a certificate as to the cause of his death, of which I was not satisfied; and you forcibly seized, in person … my effects, for the purpose of ejecting me from my house.

  I could enumerate many more cases, if necessary, but from the foregoing facts, and your admission, ‘that you were compelled to obey orders’, is sufficient evidence to prove that you are not a free agent.

  Under these circumstances I feel myself called upon to state, that I can no longer permit you to act in the capacity of a magistrate.1

  There was, as expected, no reply. Two days later he received a letter from Mackworth which read:

  I am instructed to inform you that a passage to Wellington, New Zealand, will be provided for you in the Southern Whale Fishery Company’s Schooner Black Dog which will proceed thither as soon as she can be ready for sea … A passage will also be provided for you from Wellington to England in the event of your desiring it.2

  At th
e time of this offer, Enderby had been in his new accommodation for only six days, and was still arranging his furniture, books and possessions.3 He promptly refused, replying that as his letter of resignation to Earl Grey as Lieutenant Governor, which he had not been allowed to send on the Lord Nelson, was still held by the Special Commissioners, and no longer contained the facts as they now stood, it was his wish to amend it, and his intention was to remain at Port Ross until he received advice and instructions from England.4

  Next day another letter arrived from Mackworth, stating that as Enderby had declined the offer of a passage to England, the Company was released from its obligation to provide him with one; and that because of his threats to ‘ruin’ the Company unless a different course was pursued towards him and, secondly, to shoot him or anyone else carrying out instructions respecting his change of residence, the Special Commissioners had no alternative but to require him to accompany them to New Zealand in the Black Dog. The letter went on: ‘It is the intention of the Special Commissioners, on their arrival in New Zealand, to bring [these matters] under the serious notice of Sir George Grey, to whom they have letters from Her Majesty’s Government.’

  After further criticism of Enderby’s attempt to send a letter and his posting of inflammatory notices, Mackworth’s letter concluded, much as Dundas and Preston’s had done at the end of their 10 charges, that ‘as both their time and my own is fully occupied with important matters, they desire me to request that you will consider the present letter final’.5

  After Mackworth’s ‘letter final’ there was an uneasy lull. But in his diary, Mackworth gives the full text of a letter to the Special Commissioners, clearly prompted by them and intended to discredit Enderby, regarding Mackworth’s own visit to Sydney. He had left without adverse comment, but he now stated he had been opposed to the mission from the outset, claiming that, as he had expected, there had been no purpose in his going, only to duplicate what was Captain Towns’ job anyway.6

  Erebus Cove, site of the Enderby Settlement, on a rare calm summer morning. No obvious sign remains of the cottages or other buildings.

  Since the near-mutiny of the Brisk’s crew, life at Port Ross had gone on with the settlers constantly aware that, without some sudden change in fortune, these were surely the closing weeks or months. On 13 March an auction sale of the furniture Mr Enderby no longer had room for was held at his rooms. In the warehouse, extra hands were employed packing stores for shipment. And all the while, through almost constant bad weather, there were drunken incidents and disciplinary problems to be dealt with.

  Captain Stove of the Fancy and Captain Garrick of the Black Dog were suspended from their command by Mackworth ‘until further orders, in consequence of their neglect of repeated orders respecting the landing and shipping [of] stores … Placed Mr Chamberlain in command of the Fancy in the capacity of Chief Mate, and Mr Cadenhead in command of the Black Dog in a similar capacity.’ Edward Gillett was given the equivalent of George Cook’s former job of ships’ husband, to ease communication between Mackworth and vessels in port. The suspensions did not last long: Captain Stove was soon reinstated, having forfeited a day’s pay, and Captain Garrick the day after.7

  During this period, the weather continued to be ‘very bad, and forming as usual a great obstacle to our proceedings.’8 It had been a particularly busy time for the clerks, painstakingly copying letters, despatches and memoranda, some of them very long indeed and requiring hours of work: letters from the Special Commissioners or Mr Mackworth to the Governor – or Mr Enderby as he was referred to now – and copies of Enderby’s replies; despatches and reports to the Southern Whale Fishery Company; and drafts of letters to Governor Sir George Grey in New Zealand, and Sir Charles FitzRoy, Governor of New South Wales and Tasmania. To the latter, Dundas and Preston gave their reasons for disestablishing the Company’s settlement and sacking Enderby as commissioner, stressing his ineffectuality as Lieutenant Governor, and why they saw him as unfit for that post. Finally, they asked for the support of a naval ship from Sydney, in view of Enderby’s efforts to upset law and order.9 In a long letter to FitzRoy’s deputy, Lieutenant Governor Sir William Denison of Van Diemen’s Land, they gave details of their claim that Enderby had tried to wreck their mission; and that they had no choice but to take him with them to New Zealand and put the matter before Sir George Grey.10

  Enderby later stated that these letters to the governors of the adjacent colonies, of which he was not given copies, contained the predictable ‘slanderous and false charges’ against him.11

  If the Company’s establishment was to be moved, the settlers wondered where they would be going: to Otago, Wellington or New South Wales? Or was the whole operation to cease altogether? The early days of high expectations must have seemed a long time ago.

  Meanwhile, life went on. Charlotte Bromley had given birth to a son, named James Hindsley after his father.12 Dr Rodd, who must have felt his standing as the colony’s chief medical officer had suffered badly since he had received three months’ notice at the end of December, had attended the birth. He had recently been persuaded to sign an agreement to remain in the Company’s service until the establishment was removed.13 But his disloyalty to Enderby in trying to ingratiate himself with the Special Commissioners while the threat of dismissal hung over him must have troubled him; and he must have felt increasingly uneasy about the way he had been used to get Enderby to part with the register of births, marriages and deaths. And then the Special Commissioners had made their complete about-face and had pressed him into signing an agreement to stay on, as Dr Ewington was due to leave on the next ship. A week or so later they reinstated carpenter Peter Mann14 who, like Dr Rodd, was one of the nine Company servants dismissed at the end of December: Mann might be needed in the dismantling of the colony’s prefabricated buildings when the time came.

  On 17 March the Special Commissioners explained to a large number of Maori men, women and children that the Company’s establishment was about to be removed; that a friendly feeling was held towards them; and that because they would return to their former miserable state if they stayed on after the Company’s departure, arrangements could be made for their removal to New Zealand, if they chose to accept the offer.

  Through George Cook they replied that they had already made up their minds to remain. Mackworth was astonished, and commented in his diary: ‘One can not but pity the poor creatures! Evidently victims of their natural love of independence.’15

  By this time, several Company servants, married and single, had been given notice, and the list of people due to leave was growing. Dr Ewington had defiantly told Mackworth that rather than pay his wife’s passage money, he would leave her behind! Mackworth, taking his threat seriously, had told Ewington he was not at liberty to go without her, and had instructed Munce to dock Mrs Ewington’s passage money of £7 from her husband’s salary to pay for her fare.16

  It continued to be a time of atrocious weather for outdoor work, and all available labourers not busy helping the coopers or stowing the barrels of refined oil on board the Samuel Enderby were employed in the store, packing goods for sending away on it. By the middle of March all the oil was stowed, although bad weather continued to prevent the Samuel Enderby from sailing. As Mackworth commented: ‘Getting the Samuel Enderby away is a matter of great anxiety, but we cannot change the Climate.’17

  Enderby, believing he could persuade his long-trusted friend Captain Henderson of the Samuel Enderby to take a letter to Sydney by handing it to him personally, had written to Earl Grey, Secretary of State for the Colonies, briefly giving the reasons why he now regretted his haste in resigning as Lieutenant Governor. He knew his letter of resignation had not yet been forwarded by the Special Commissioners, and pointed out that he had demanded it back in order to make necessary additions and alterations, but that this request had been refused. His letter ended by asking that any measures connected with his resignation be suspended until he had written again, after conferring wit
h Sir George Grey in Wellington.18

  His hopes of sending this vital letter on the Samuel Enderby were foiled, however, when Dundas and Preston forbade Captain Henderson to accept any mail not authorised by them.19 If it had not been for the gales and rain of the last few days, the Special Commissioners’ own numerous letters and despatches would already have left on the Samuel Enderby when, late on 28 March, HMS Calliope unexpectedly entered the harbour.

  The arrival of Captain Sir Everard Home, the Senior British Naval Officer of the New Zealand and Australia Station, on a routine visit as part of the British Navy’s obligation to keep an eye on the colony, turned out to be an unexpected setback for Dundas and Preston. Certain of their position, they lost no time bringing him up to date with the present situation: that Enderby’s position as Lieutenant Governor was meaningless as everyone here was in the Company’s employment; that Enderby had agreed to resign and then a month later changed his mind and tried to resist and wreck their legitimate mission; and that they had no choice but to take him with them to New Zealand and lay the matter before Governor Sir George Grey. Mackworth, relieved at the Calliope’s arrival, commented ‘Nothing more fortunate could have occurred than the arrival of this Ship, and I sincerely hope we shall not again be left in this desolate place without the phisical power to oppose and punish the vilainous conduct of abandoned men.’20 However, his enthusiasm might have been lessened if he could have foreseen Sir Everard’s summing up of the administration at Port Ross.

  The following morning the Special Commissioners and Mackworth paid a social call on Sir Everard and the officers of the Calliope. But by far the most important meeting of the day was the one between Sir Everard Home and Charles Enderby. It would have been extraordinary if they had not met and had discussion – although the only direct confirmations of it are at the beginning of a substantial letter from Enderby to Sir Everard, when he refers to ‘our yesterday’s conversation’;21 and in Sir Everard’s reply, when he too mentions their ‘conversation’.22 Enderby had sent Sir Everard a brief note, asking for his ‘advice and assistance in supporting my authority as Lieutenant-governor of these islands, which has been usurped, myself personally insulted, and my authority denied by Messrs. Dundas and Preston, Special Commissioners of the Southern Whale Fishery Company, and by Mr. Mackworth, acting under their orders’.23