The Enderby Settlement

by The Enderby Settlement (epub)

  ‘After a most laborious day we reached in safety the Cliffs opposite “Disappointment Island” about 8 o’clock,’ records Mackworth. Since the arrival of the Earl of Hardwicke his diary was less inclined to one-line comments on the weather, discipline and shipping, and was becoming increasingly detailed and descriptive. Retreating to relative shelter, they

  built a hut (never was a building more undeserving of so comfortable a name) and laid down to sleep with the wet above and the wet below, the most piercing wind occasionally blowing down the few sticks we had dared to erect with a view of being protected from its violence. [The next day] we started at daylight, cold, stiff, and nearly dead for Port Ross. Throughout the whole of the day we suffered intensely from wind, hail, snow and rain. The ground, a great extent of which a dense mist compelled us to travel over, we found rugged, boggy and covered with bush of which no one but ourselves can form the remotest idea. At midday our provisions and ourselves were exhausted, with no further means of procuring even fire. In this unenviable situation we waded or rather climbed onwards with an indefinite idea of our course and up a fearful hill. At the summit of this we found the mist partially cleared away and satisfied ourselves with regard to the best course. At 5 o’clock we stood on the shore of Laurie Harbour and gave Three Cheers (these were more like three audible gasps for breath). I am convinced that nothing but the fear of the alarming consequences of being benighted carried us to our boat.14

  Shortly after Enderby’s return from New Zealand, Mackworth had handed him despatches which had arrived during his absence, together with his diary, and a letter stating what satisfaction it would give him to know that his actions as the Chief Commissioner’s representative met with his approval. It was a week before Enderby answered, assuring him ‘that the manner in which you have conducted the affairs of this Colony during my absence meets my full approbation’.15

  Mackworth was pleased. A good reference was worth having, especially from a successful London merchant whose family had been leading shipowners for many years, and whose vessels had won esteem for Britain with their pioneering discoveries.

  Five days later – for the Chief Commissioner still had a great deal to catch up on – he showed Mackworth part of a letter he had written to Thomas Preston, the Company’s secretary, in which he stated, ‘I returned to Port Ross on the 14th inst and found all the affairs of the Colony under the management of Mr Mackworth in a very satisfactory state, and … I take this opportunity of expressing to the Board my entire satisfaction and approval of the conduct of W. Mackworth who has on all occasions strenuously exerted himself to carry out the views of the Directors and render me assistance.’16

  The Enderby family emblem of a harpooner poised to strike, on a silver salver. The emblem was used on family silverware and cutlery.

  Courtesy Mrs Barbara Enderby

  The Enderby Settlement in 1850, showing the base of the peninsula dividing the two bays, Erebus Cove and Davis Bay.

  That evening, Munce wrote: ‘Dinner Party at Government House – No less than six white shirts exhibited on the male portion of the Company.’ It must have been a particularly satisfying occasion for Enderby, recently back from Wellington and with things going well with Mackworth and Munce: a warm room; convivial mixed company; and candlelight shining on the family silver with its emblem of the harpooner with harpoon poised at the prow of a whaleboat, reminding them all of their purpose there.

  About this time, Mackworth had the builders start on the first house to be built in the proposed town of Hardwicke.17 On Enderby’s orders, urgency was given to completing two cottages so that John Cooper, a bricklayer, with his wife, son and daughter, and Thomas Younger with his wife and one-month-old baby daughter Isabel could vacate the ‘superior officers’ quarters’ they were sharing, making room for William Munce to move in.

  Enderby now asked Mackworth to take command of an expedition to the Southern Harbour to look for humpback whales and fur seals. He left in fine weather in the cutter Auckland with Captain Phile and Mr Cook, accompanied by two whaleboats. If no whales were caught, they were to bring back sealskins and blubber – although seal oil could never match that of whales for commercial quality.

  Halfway down the east coast the weather changed abruptly. A sudden squall coincided with a tidal rip, which nearly cost them the two boats. One capsized close to rocks but was skilfully anchored by George Cook. It had to be left behind for six days of violent gales and some of the worst storms experienced, until it could be recovered. Some gear had been lost, but otherwise it was undamaged.

  In a further week of bad weather with frequent gales and ‘terrific squalls with hail and snow’, during which the settlers must have felt under siege, work was confined to the interiors of the new cottages. On Sunday 13 October Mackworth dined with Enderby, and they discussed improvements in the settlement’s facilities: there was still no school, but seven children now attended Sunday school.18

  Next, shortly before a party celebrating his birthday, George Bond the surveyor was dismissed from the company’s service for having openly told the Lieutenant Governor of his intention to disobey orders and distil liquor. His friends doubted his dismissal would last long, as the colony could hardly do without its surveyor. But this was not the most memorable event of the day, as Mackworth records:

  12 o’clock at night – One of the most appalling attempts at murder and suicide has just been made by Miss Hallett sister of chief medical officer – It appears that this young Lady after firing through a door pannel at her Brother with intent to kill (he providentially escaping) leisurely reloaded the gun and shot herself while endeavours were being made to force the door. Was on the spot immediately afterwards – the side of this unfortunate person’s head fearfully lacerated, the skull has not been fractured – hopes are entertained of her recovery.19

  As a result of the Hallett affair, a notice was posted by the Chief Commissioner limiting people to two pints of spirits weekly – a generous amount considering that beer was still in unlimited supply! – and stating that any person found intoxicated would either have his wages reduced by one fifth or be dismissed from the Company’s service. ‘Much policy in this!’ commented Mackworth, who backed up Enderby’s notice by proposing a Total Abstinence Society. He was supported by Munce: ‘This measure was proposed by Mr Mackworth and adopted for myself and a few others for the benefit of Example to the Colonials, many of whom are often led into mischief through intoxication.’ Six people signed the pledge, to take effect ‘for 6 months if resident in, or within sight of the Auckland Islands’20 – but because of covert opposition from the likes of Dr and Mrs Rodd, who were heavy social drinkers, and the fact that alcohol was so important to the entire community, from ships’ crew to Company servants and officers, the concept of total abstinence was bound to fail. So were alcohol-related dismissals such as George Bond’s, which lasted only seven days. But Hephzibah Hallett’s attack on her brother was more serious, and on the day Bond was reinstated, Dr Hallett agreed with Enderby’s recommendation that he should resign.21

  Morale, which was generally at a low ebb in the colony, had been lifted the previous day with the arrival of two ships within four hours of one another: the schooners Perseverance and Eliza. After putting the pilot on to the Perseverance, the Eliza had to be stopped from coming through the narrow boat passage between Enderby Island and the main island, and be led the safe way around Enderby Island instead. The Perseverance, with general cargo, was from London and Wellington, and brought Mackworth’s adventurous cousin Digby Mackworth. The Eliza from Hobart Town, with a ‘cargo on speculation’ – much of it for private trading by Munce – brought news of the death of Sir Robert Peel, who was thrown from his horse three and a half months previously.

  Whether it was due to the Hallett affair and the problems of alcohol, news of a poor whaling season in Tasmania, Bond’s reinstatement, the simultaneous arrival of the two schooners or the impact of all these is uncertain, but that same night, after d
ealing with Bond and Hallett, Enderby suffered his second ‘painful spasmodic attack’.22 The following evening Munce was at Government House with the two Mackworths, no doubt celebrating Digby’s arrival, when ‘it was discovered that the ground under the Fireplaces in the Sitting Room and Bedroom of his Excellency was on fire. Took up the bricks, wood and Earth, and extinguished the fire.’23

  The following dawn one of the severest gales the settlement had experienced broke the cutter Auckland free of its moorings. Fortunately this happened at dawn, and Mackworth and others were able to get on board and save it from disaster. The Fancy’s pinnace was not so lucky: it had broken adrift in the middle of the night because one of the ship’s officers had not carried out orders and made sure it was secure. Captain Phile took a whaleboat to look for the pinnace and was blown around Ocean Point. He went ashore with four men to search unsuccessfully along the shoreline. The party returned at dawn to find the fifth man, left in charge of the whaleboat, had fallen asleep and allowed it to drift. When he awoke, this ‘bright individual’ was well offshore. He managed to row the boat to the lee of Ocean Island, and everyone was finally picked up by the cutter, which had come looking for them.24

  The day after the storm was fine and sunny. After dinner a party consisting of the Governor, Munce, Digby Mackworth, Charles King and George Cook went for a walk around the coast of Enderby Island. Munce recalls they encountered six sea lions and a sea leopard – a large, streamlined seal with mottled markings, sharp teeth and a dangerous disposition. ‘For the first time witnessed the exciting sport of killing a Lion. Mr King and Mr Cook killed three, very fine old fellows – the Leopard was an easy prey to the Governor. In going to Sandy Bay discovered the boat which was lost on the night of the 22nd very much damaged.’ Mackworth also noted they ‘recovered the remains of lost pinnace’, and that ‘Captain Phile proposed resigning his appointment, this the Chief Commissioner could not accept.’25

  Very little would be known about social events and everyday life in the colony if it were not for William Mackworth and William Munce’s diaries.

  William Augustus Mackworth was born on 3 March 1825, one of a family of two boys and eight girls. His father Herbert was the second son of Sir Digby Mackworth (the third baronet to the title),26 and was High Sheriff of the Caribbean island of Trinidad. Circumstances prevented William from following his father to Westminster School27 but he was admitted to Trinity College Cambridge on 6 May 1844.28 At the end of his first year he was placed in the bottom class of the college examinations, and it seems he then left, as there is no record of his attendance after June 1845.29 After this setback, he must have taken stock and turned his life around, to land the responsible job of Assistant Commissioner at the Enderby Settlement at the age of 24.

  William John Munce was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1814, the oldest of the four children of Samuel Munce and his wife Elizabeth. In 1831 the family, with his father’s second wife Sarah (Elizabeth had died earlier) emigrated to Hobart Town in Van Diemens Land (now Tasmania) in the brig Yare. In 1836 William moved to Sydney to work as an accountant. There he became involved in social welfare concerns of the Wesleyan Church. Two years later he married Mary McKenny, daughter of Reverend John McKenny. By the time William accepted the job of accountant at the Auckland Islands in 1850, he was a prominent Freemason – and a widower with six children.

  On Sunday 27 October, his thirty-sixth birthday, Munce was in an unusually withdrawn and antisocial mood. Liz was not yet with him. He records: ‘Did not go out except to church in the morning. Tried to leave off Smoking but had not sufficient resolution …’ He ‘retired early to avoid Worldly conversation’.30

  There were several new births in the settlement about this time – nine months or so since the first settlers had had some privacy ashore and on board ship. George and Matilda Cook’s first child Catherine was born on 5 September; the Goodgers’ son Mateora was born on 22 October (named after paramount chief Matioro, with whom Tom had become close friends);31 and carpenter Peter Mann and his wife Eliza’s daughter Mary Jane was born on 26 October.32

  The day the lost pinnace was recovered, Enderby proposed that Mackworth go to New Zealand in the Fancy to enlist whaling crewmen and buy sheep. However, caulking and other work still had to be completed to make the Fancy seaworthy, so he went instead in the Eliza, which was to call at Port Chalmers en route to Australia. He would return in the Fancy, which would follow later and was large enough to carry the men and sheep he planned to bring back.

  William Cargill was founder of the Free Church of Scotland Otago Settlement in 1848, with which ships of the Enderby Settlement had frequent contact.

  Toitu Otago Settlers Museum

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Otago Interlude

  In spite of stormy weather and heavy seas, the Eliza sailed early on the morning of 29 October, with the two Mackworths and James Bromley the butcher on board. Bromley would be involved in selecting 150 sheep to take back to Port Ross. Mackworth, who was reticent on private matters, makes no reference in his diary to Digby being with him; in fact his only mention of his cousin in the five months Digby was at the colony was of his arrival nine days earlier. For information on matters of personal significance to Mackworth – such as would occur in the days just ahead – we have Catherine Fulton (née Valpy) to thank;1 and William Munce recorded details of Digby’s social involvement and misadventures at Port Ross.

  Dr Hallett and his sister should also have been aboard the Eliza, but Enderby had had second thoughts: it was no easy matter to dismiss a doctor from such a remote place as Port Ross, and two days before they sailed, he had informed Mackworth that ‘on being assured by Mr Hallett that such an act, as that committed by his Sister on the night of the 14th instant, will not occur again; he has signified to that Gentleman that no notice will be taken of the occurrences of that night’.2

  Although they sighted the Snares before noon and passed close to Stewart Island the same day, it took the Eliza five more days to reach Port Chalmers after weathering furious gales and shipping a wave that almost capsized it.

  Mackworth and Bromley decided the sheep that had been brought down the coast on the Lady Clarke for them to purchase were in ‘too miserable a condition’;3 and Bromley was instructed to look at several other possibilities. The Mackworths then took the road from Port Chalmers to Dunedin to pay a courtesy call on Captain Cargill, the founder and head of the Otago settlement.

  Cargill was an autocratic Scot in his mid-sixties, with a large head and a stiff brush of white hair still tinged with red. His closely trimmed beard was little more than a fuzz under his chin. His preference was for casual clothes and a huge tam-o’-shanter topped with a bright red pompon.4 Mackworth gives no details of the meeting, but no doubt Cargill would have made it clear to him that he would firmly resist any challenge from central government in Wellington to his absolute authority in Otago during the impending viceregal visit of Governor Sir George Grey.

  At the time, the Otago settlement was less than three years old. The first Free Church of Scotland immigrants had arrived in March 18485 and the settlement was still in its raw beginnings. Dunedin clearly had greater resources than Port Ross, however: it had more permanent buildings, shops, a flour mill and a fortnightly newspaper, the Otago News – soon to be superseded, after it criticised the Establishment, by the Otago Witness.6 Meat and vegetables appeared to be in good supply, thanks largely to the wealthy whaler, landowner and shipping entrepreneur Johnny Jones, whose store was stocked with produce from his extensive farmlands at Waikouaiti, north of Dunedin, which he had developed since moving there from Sydney in 1843.7 Two large immigration sheds for processing newly arrived settlers stood on the waterfront at the intersection of Princes and High streets. Like Port Ross, Dunedin was surrounded by hills cut by steep gullies choked with vegetation.

  The plan was to reclaim the shallow tidal mudflats of the inner harbour so that the early shoreline, which followed Princes Street to the Exchange and the st
eep promontory of Bell Hill, would be hundreds of yards from the sea. Bell Hill would become part of the inner city, no longer all but cutting the site in two. However, money was short, and the settlement’s streets and roads would have to be seen to first: at present, they were still unpaved, and women’s dresses dragged in the dust or mud.

  As Mackworth discovered during his stay, it did not take much to make the road to Port Chalmers impassable. He was forced to make the difficult journey several times as the Eliza’s captain was impatient to sail – even though there was still no sign of the Fancy, which would be taking the sheep back to the Auckland Islands. Mackworth was anxious not to be left stranded. Finally the Eliza could wait no longer, and departed – only to meet the incoming Fancy at Taiaroa Head at the harbour entrance. The two ships returned to Port Chalmers together, as the Fancy had arrived with a proposal from Enderby that Johnny Jones, who owned the Eliza, might consider exchanging it for the Fancy and £500. This deal fell through; but there was also a request for Mackworth to send George Cook, who had arrived on the Fancy, down the coast to bring back a sealing boat that Enderby had ordered on his previous trip.8 Captain Phile, whose offer to resign after the wreck of the Fancy’s pinnace had been refused, was on board: he had insisted on leaving the Company’s service and had been replaced by Captain Tapsell.9 Tapsell, in turn, must have seen his appointment to the Fancy as a stopgap measure in his chequered career at the Enderby Settlement.