by Joanna Orwin
In such ways, ripples from the stone flung into the waters of Tokerau by te iwi o Mariou have spread wider and wider throughout my lifetime until they have touched many of the peoples of the north. Accordingly, when more strangers from the sea began arriving in their ships in more recent years, some of our chiefs moved away from Tokerau, having no wish to associate with treacherous people whose behaviour could result in such far-flung repercussions.
Ka mutu – [this account] is finished.
[Editor’s note: Under the command of du Clesmeur and Crozet, the French ships reached Guam on 20 September 1772. With the assistance of a pilot provided by the Governor, they continued to Manila in the Philippines, where both ships stayed for several months undergoing extensive repairs. The Castries sailed first, arriving back at the Île-de-France on 8 April 1773. Crozet, who sold the trade cargo in Manila, sailed a month later and arrived on 7 May. The profit was insufficient to pay the sailors or reimburse the King for the costs of the expedition. Despite Marion’s distinguished service to his country, the authorities were disinclined to be generous; all his property and possessions on the Île-de-France were duly forfeited and his widow left penniless—the Marion family itself finally being declared bankrupt in Brittany in 1788. It was not until 1790 that the unpaid surviving sailors were eventually granted a naval gratuity as compensation. Jean Roux went on to become a lieutenant before disappearing from the records after 1776. Paul Chevillard held the rank of capitaine de vaisseau (retired)—equivalent to an army colonel—when he died in Rochefort in 1820. Julien Crozet rose to the rank of fireship captain (the same rank attained by Marion) in the French Navy, in which he served until he died in Paris in 1782. Crozet had met Cook at the Cape of Good Hope in 1775, where they swapped notes about their respective voyages to New Zealand, and Cook acknowledged Marion’s prior discovery of the Prince Edward Islands by renaming the largest island after him. Du Clesmeur continued his career in the French Navy, achieving the rank of capitaine de vaisseau at the beginning of 1792 before he disappeared from the records, perhaps suffering the fate of many aristocrats during the French Revolution. Like Marion, both du Clesmeur and Chevillard became Chevaliers of the Order of St Louis, awarded for outstanding service.]
Author’s note and acknowledgements
With historical fiction, readers often want to know where history ends and fiction begins. Collision is based primarily on retrospective eye-witness accounts of the French sojourn in the Bay of Islands written by some of the surviving officers—Crozet, Roux and Chevillard from the Mascarin, Du Clesmeur (who also left an enlightening navigational log) and Le Dez from the Marquis de Castries. I have drawn heavily on Robert McNabb’s translations in Historical Records of New Zealand (1908–1914) and Isobel Ollivier’s translations in Extracts from journals relating to the visit to New Zealand in May–July 1772 of the French ships Mascarin and Marquis de Castries under the command of M. J. Marion du Fresne (1985). All named French officers in the novel were real people except for my narrator, the seventeen-year-old ensign André Tallec. My depiction of their personalities, attitudes and interactions reflects my interpretation of their own versions of events; any physical attributes ascribed to them are mostly fictional. Unfortunately, Marion’s journals and logs have not survived, and my portrayal of him has evolved from his contemporaries’ opinions of him, his actions and what he was reported as saying. Apart from the specific retrospective accounts noted, I found E. Duyker’s 1994 biography An Officer of the Blue: Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne, South Sea explorer 1724–1772 particularly useful for gleaning aspects of Marion’s personality from his earlier life and exploits.
Named Maori characters in the novel were also real people, except for the youth Te Kape, who is fictional. Different tribal accounts attribute Marion’s death to two different chiefs with similar names—Te Kuri and Te Kauri. Both seem to have been present in the Bay of Islands at the time, and both had Western connections. Although I use the name Te Kuri—mainly because the French phonetic rendering ‘Tacoury’ seems to favour Te Kuri over Te Kauri, and a later European visitor reported that he was told a chief named ‘Cooley’ or ‘the dog’ (te kuri) was responsible (Peter Dillon in 1829)—I acknowledge that claims for the name Te Kauri are equally valid. Unfortunately, no detailed published Maori version of all the events is available; Te Kape’s manuscript, like Te Kape himself, is fictional. However, this fictional manuscript draws on several genuine short Maori accounts of Marion’s death and its aftermath recorded in the mid-nineteenth century, notably in John White’s manuscript collections or published in his Ancient History of the Maori, Vol. 10, including a version told by Hakiro, son of Tareha (copy courtesy of Auckland Public Library). I also borrowed material from Maori manuscripts about other early encounters with European ships. These published sources were supplemented by traditional information entrusted to me by Paeata Clark, Ngati Hine and a descendant of Te Rawhiti people involved in the events of 1772, who not only gave me access to her immense collection of Bay of Islands cultural and historical material, but also provided extensive and illuminating comments on the draft Te Kape manuscript.
I have tried to reconstruct as accurate a sequence of events as possible, using all the available sources, but readers should note that the eye-witness accounts themselves contain some discrepancies and obscurities. The only totally fictional episodes are those which feature the friendship between my narrator André Tallec and Te Kape, and André’s experience at Te Kuri’s village. Useful modern analyses of the events of 1772 came primarily from Anne Salmond’s Two Worlds (1991) and Between Worlds (1997); John Dunmore’s various books on French explorers in the Pacific; Katherine Shallcross’s 1966 masterate thesis, Maoris of the Bay of Islands 1769–1840: A study in changing Maori attitudes towards Europeans; and Fergus Clunie’s draft unpublished document ‘Kerikeri and Colonisation’ (kindly provided by the Department of Conservation, Kerikeri). Inevitably, my interpretation of motivations and events sometimes deviates from these analyses. Events have been located geographically as accurately as possible.
I am indebted to many people who assisted with the research for this novel: first and foremost Paeata Clark for her guidance and support throughout, and to her and Neville Clark for their extended hospitality at Kohukohu; Erima Henare for persuading Paeata to take me under her wing; Wiremu Wiremu for insights on the contact period; the staff of the Macmillan Brown Library (University of Canterbury)—in particular, Jill Durney—for extended loans of research material; Peter Tremewan for an invaluable reading list on eighteenth-century French social and political history; Barry Thompson for his meticulous elucidation of nautical matters; the crew of the replica nineteenth-century schooner R. Tucker Thompson for a memorable five-day voyage that helped me recreate 1770s’ Bay of Islands from the sea; my partner, Ron, for accompanying me on several northern research trips; and, as always, my family, John, Sally and Kate, for their continuing support. A grant from Creative New Zealand gave me the freedom to immerse myself in the fictional recreation of this fascinating episode in New Zealand’s history.
Copyright
First published in 2009
This edition published in 2011
by HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1, Shortland Street, Auckland, 1140
Copyright © Joanna Orwin 2009
Joanna Orwin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:
Orwin, Joanna.
Collision / Joanna Orwin.
ISBN 978 1 8695 0778 7 (pbk.)
ISBN 978 0 7304 0071 4 (epub)
I. Title.
NZ823.2—dc 22
sp;
Joanna Orwin, Collision
