The Enderby Settlement in 1850, showing the peninsula dividing the two bays, Erebus Cove and Davis Bay (artist unknown).
Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ref. 18971 d. 65
Some might have wondered why Grey should visit the Auckland Islands at all, although most would have put it down to his love of adventure and an understandable break from care: a temporary escape, for example, from the criticism he was receiving over his Provincial Councils Bill.22 But an underlying reason did exist.
Sir George had been instructed by his namesake Earl Grey, Secretary of State for the Colonies, ‘to take an unofficial interest in the welfare of the colony’.23 There was ambiguity as to whether the Auckland Islands were territorially part of New Zealand at the time of the Enderby Settlement or an independent British Crown colony; they could hardly be both simultaneously. Those like Sir George Grey who were involved found it best to ignore the dilemma and hope it would never come into dispute. In Grey’s commission as Governor of New Zealand, he had been abstrusely advised that ‘the limits of [his] Government to the south, are so defined as to include the Auckland Islands, on which a separate settlement has lately been established by British colonists, and which it will be inconvenient to place within the limits of New Zealand, for the purposes of the present Act’.24 The Colonial Office later acknowledged that the ambiguity about the Auckland Islands had been a ‘mistake’.25 To make the contradiction even more confusing, it was pointed out that ‘The position of the Aucklands is 51 deg. South latitude. The boundary is therefore fixed at 50 deg.’26 The clause excluding the Auckland Islands from New Zealand was on shaky legal ground because it did not absolutely repeal the inclusive limits given by the earlier letters patent. The clause was finally repealed in 1863 and New Zealand’s southern boundary was extended to 53 degrees South to firmly include the Auckland Islands.27
Grey left the colony impressed with its progress. Later he wrote in support of Enderby to Earl Grey’s successor at the Colonial Office: ‘I think it due to Mr. Enderby to state, that whilst he was acting as Lieutenant-governor of the Auckland Islands, I visited those islands, and was, in common with other persons, struck with the enterprise which he had shown, and the energy with which he had exerted himself to try to develop their resources.’28
The Mackworths, Bromley and his new wife Charlotte, several new crewmen for the whaling fleet and 145 sheep finally reached Port Ross in the Fancy, a week or so after the Greys’ departure.29 Before formally presenting his written report, William Mackworth spoke with the Lieutenant Governor about his dealings in Dunedin; and he mentioned the sacking of Captain Tapsell. He also told Munce he had heard the Earl of Hardwicke was on its way from Sydney with Munce’s fiancée and children.30
Soon afterwards, Enderby informed Mackworth that Captain Tapsell had forestalled any decision on their part by resigning his appointment with the Company. Tapsell had been one of the colony’s first appointed magistrates, and the most experienced of its whaling masters. Since being relieved of his command after the unproductive voyage of the Brisk, which may have been due as much to season and storm as any fault of his, Tapsell had been understandably disenchanted, and yet had been relied upon more than once in moments of crisis such as the call on his expertise after the grounding of the Earl of Hardwicke31 and his appointment to command of the Fancy on 6 November,32 after Captain Phile’s resignation.33 But Enderby must have seen that after his demotion aboard the Fancy at Port Chalmers, there could be no further negotiations, and a week after the Fancy’s return to Port Ross, Thomas Tapsell’s verbal resignation was followed by formal dismissal from the Company’s service.34
Munce had been appointed a magistrate by the Lieutenant Governor and had held his first court while Mackworth was away. He fined William Casely 20 shillings for assaulting Thomas Younger. Three days later, as it was a pleasant evening, he ‘took a long walk with Mr Rodd after dinner, settled with Rodd that if I got authority to occupy the plot of ground on the point facing Mateoro’s Pah, the same being fenced with bushes, he will find all seed except potatoes and cultivate the ground, giving me half the produce’.35 As ever, the businessman! Not long after, having presumably got permission to use the land from Enderby, he ‘walked to the garden (!) in the aftn., dug a little and planted a few rows of French Beans’. He may have been inspired by the fact that Mackworth had started a vegetable garden some weeks before.36
While he waited for his family to arrive, Munce took advantage of a spell of fine weather and sailed with chief Matioro and several seamen to explore Chapel Bay and Lake Hinemoa (known as the Font), which lay up a valley at the head of the inlet (the same inlet Enderby had visited with the officers of the Havannah and Fly). Accompanied by Munce’s dog Towser, they pushed their way inland, ‘in some parts having to scramble on hands and knees’ beside a stream. Matioro assured Munce the effort would be worth it, and eventually they reached the Font, a sheet of water covering about 10 acres, fed by ‘a pretty cataract with a fall of about 80 feet’.
After dinner, near the entrance to the sound, they explored the Cavern and Grotto. The cavern extending back some 300 feet until it turned a corner and was lost in darkness; and the grotto widened from a narrow entrance to a huge space 150 feet in diameter, with vertical walls 200 feet high. ‘On the whole,’ wrote Munce, ‘there is in this Bay as pretty places for sights as I could well desire to behold.’
They made their way north and anchored in a sheltered bay for the night, where Matioro shot a sea lion, and Munce a brace of ducks. That night they slept soundly, in spite of ‘Myriads of Sand flies on the beach’.37
On the third day they set off for home, anchoring in Fancy Bay (it was called this because the Fancy used it as an anchorage from where it could respond quickly to sightings of whales along that part of the coast). For most of the expedition they lived on shellfish and fish, which Munce ate with relish, only to find later they would have been infested with parasitic worms, due to pollution of the water by the colonies of sea lions and fur seals.38
From Fancy Bay they called in at Ngatere’s pa up on the headland. A small child had died about three days earlier, and they:
witnessed the lamentation of the women. The mother had cut her forehead, which was bandaged with green grass. Others were squatted on the ground making a dismal chant or howl which they broke off occasionally to shake hands with each visitor (of our party) as he arrived and said ‘Tenaquai’ [tena koe] – altogether the exhibition appeared a very hypocrisy of mourning – up anchor and home where we arrived at 4 PM – during the time of the Funeral of Younger’s Child who died since we left on Monday.39
At three months old, Isabel Younger was the first European to die since the settlers’ arrival.
The Enderby Settlement graveyard. All but one of these is the grave of later shipwrecked mariners. The wooden markers and signs of early graves are long since gone.
Munce’s explorations with Matioro had been a welcome diversion from what was uppermost in his mind. He had employed George Crane, builder and bricklayer, to paste over the joints and whitewash his room and the passage in preparation for Liz’s arrival;40 and Thomas Clarke’s wife had agreed to cook for them.41 Then on Monday 16 December Munce was enjoying a game of cribbage with Charles King when news came that a vessel had been sighted as darkness was falling. It was thought to be the Earl of Hardwicke, on which Liz and four of his children were assumed to be travelling. Munce turned in at 11 o’clock, and ‘notwithstanding the surmises of everyone that my anxiety would keep me awake,’ slept soundly.
‘At 3 AM started from bed – at ½ past 3 went in a whale boat (there being too little wind for the Cutter) to meet the vessel which we saw working up.’ He was greatly disappointed to see it was not the three-masted Earl of Hardwicke but a much smaller two-masted schooner, the Black Dog. However, on boarding her, he was delighted to find Liz and the four children. They had arrived on the Black Dog and not the Earl of Hardwicke because when the Earl of Hardwicke reached Sydney, Captain Towns had sac
ked Captain Browne, signed on a fresh crew and given the new master, Captain Oliver, instructions to sail direct from Sydney on a year-long whaling voyage to the Sea of Okhotsk.42
The gravestone of Isabel Younger, infant daughter of the Enderby Settlement’s civil engineer: ‘I.Y. DIED 22nd NOV 1850 AGED 3 MONTHS.’
The new vessel, the Black Dog, had been purchased by Enderby during his six-week business trip to New Zealand and New South Wales three months previously for use in trade with the settlement’s New Zealand and Australian neighbours. The crossing had been stormy, and 228 sheep had been lost at sea. Munce’s three little girls, Maria (5), Elizabeth (3) and Emily (1½) were well, and thrilled to see their father. The fourth child, 11-year-old Johnny, was ‘suffering from a severe attack which affected his nervous system so that he is almost incapable of speech or action. They had a very rough passage of 14 days – everything of bedding and clothing drenched with salt water.’43
Sketch by Charles King of the Black Dog ‘in tribulation’ en route from Port Ross to Sydney, 7 April 1851.
Mitchell Library, NSW
After they had disembarked, Johnny was put to bed under Dr Hallett’s care. That afternoon William Munce and Elizabeth McKenny were married by His Excellency at Government House. The witnesses were William and Digby Mackworth, Munce’s assistant Charles King, Captain Brooks of the Black Dog and Mrs Rodd, who gave the Munces ‘every assistance’ that evening to get things in order in their home.44
Two days later the Samuel Enderby returned from an eight-month voyage to the southern fishery with enough blubber for 191 barrels of sperm oil. Apart from the Fancy’s catch of a whale on its outward voyage from England, this was the first ship to reach port with oil. The valuable case oil was already sealed in casks. It was a reasonable result, although Enderby reckoned the voyage should have yielded sufficient blubber, with the case oil, for at least 320 barrels.45 The very next day humpback whales were sighted in the harbour and pursued, but without success. Neither pelagic nor shore whaling was producing anything like the returns Enderby had hoped for, and the colony’s second year was starting on an anxious note.
With only two days to go before Christmas, Enderby decided at short notice to take three sailors and a landsman and sail for the island’s Southern Harbour, with no particular purpose other than to take time out and gather the mussels so abundant there. They slept the two nights of the voyage in the usual way under the boat hauled up on the shore, with a driftwood fire burning. They were back in time for Christmas dinner.
Boxing Day was a general holiday, marked by the sports that had been cancelled on Anniversary Day. The Maori put on a fearsome haka, and there were competitions in quoits, jumping and footraces, a whaleboat race, throwing the harpoon and rifle shooting, at which Munce won first prize of £2. He also did well from the sale of food and other supplies sent to him by his associate Elliott in Sydney.46
Dr Rodd had taken Dr Hallett’s place in looking after Johnny Munce, and believed he might be fully recovered in two months’ time, but not sooner. However, by the middle of January Johnny was ‘considerably better’, and ‘able to talk and walk’; and was soon ‘daily getting better’.47
On New Year’s Eve, the Samuel Enderby was finally discharged of its oil and blubber. In the evening, a party at the Munces ‘saw the old year out. At home, with Rodd, Peek, King, 2 Mackworths – Loo [a gambling card game] and Grog. 12 O.C. [ships] Bells ringing for it.’
A week into the new year, while oil from the Samuel Enderby was being loaded aboard the Fancy for shipping to Sydney, a school of blackfish (or pilot whales – which conservationists these days expend enormous effort on keeping alive and returning to the open sea) was seen heading up Laurie Harbour. Eight whaleboats from the Samuel Enderby and the Fancy set off in pursuit.
By the time a second lot of boats with spectators arrived to see the sport, the slaughter of the whales was in full swing. Several had been harpooned and warped to the main lines of the first ones caught, and the bloodied water was churned up as the frantic animals plunged. A few had turned towards the open harbour, but no more than two or three got past the waiting whaleboats. Others, stranded in the shallows, would be easy game when the tide went out. In all more than 60 were taken, and the less experienced of the whaleboat crews had been given useful practice. As it was getting late, most of the whales were left there for the night.
At daylight, the long job began of towing the pilot whales back down the harbour to the settlement. The cutting-in was done on shore near the brick structure of the tryworks attached to the cooperage building, and aboard the Samuel Enderby. Chain slings were fixed around the ‘small’ of the body, just before the spread of the tail. The animals, many up to 20 feet long and 7–8 feet in girth and weighing up to 3 tons, were then flensed of their 3-inch layer of blubber, and the case oil from their heads was carefully ladled into separate casks. As with the huge sperm whales, the case reservoir took up a large part of the head and yielded a clear colourless oil that clouded and became wax-like as it cooled. The quality of the case oil was inferior to that of the larger whales, though. Two and a half days’ work rendering down the blubber in the huge iron trypots at the cooperage yielded nearly 5 tons of oil48 and a plentiful supply of meat.49 The stench that drifted across the settlement attracted bush blowflies by the hundreds.
In spite of this bonus – or perhaps, perversely, because of it – Enderby now had to face what he had been avoiding for some time: the fact that, despite his calculations, things were not working out as expected. He must have told himself not to worry as the ships to augment the whaling fleet would soon arrive. He still believed that, given time, they were bound to succeed.
The Fancy was being prepared for sea and articles were being signed with its crew when it was noticed that Digby Mackworth and James Peek were missing. Digby had earlier announced his intention of sailing for New Zealand. It appeared they had left at nine in the morning, crossed Port Ross and sailed through the tricky boat passage between Enderby and Rose Island. Faced with the open sea they had decided their enterprise was perhaps too ambitious and, returning through the passage, they had become wrecked on Rose Island, where they had lit a signal fire. They were eventually seen by Gillett the pilot from his lookout on Enderby Island. Munce records ‘Gillett took a boat down for them and brought them up. D.M. drunk – the boat a total wreck.’50
William Mackworth makes no reference to the incident in his diary, but one wonders whether it was his own prized boat that Digby had borrowed. William had mentioned how much he valued it in a letter to his mother: ‘The only sort of recreation I can look forward to when things are more established and one is not so pressed by work, is boating – and I have got such a boat from a merchant-ship, that even you would not object to sailing in. No whales have come in yet, but we are daily looking out for them.’51
Reflecting on Digby’s taste for adventure, William may have remembered the escapade of an uncle, Sir Digby Mackworth, while a junior pupil at Westminster School. For a bet, this earlier Digby had spent a night in Westminster Abbey, surrounded by the tombs of some of England’s greatest men. He had ended up Captain of the School, so the masters couldn’t have thought too badly of him. He later became a colonel, serving in the Peninsula War as ADC to Wellington’s ablest general, Lord Hill, at the battle of Waterloo.52 So perhaps there was hope for the present Digby.
Enderby was concerned that James Peek, who had a similar propensity to Digby for getting into trouble, happened to be the son of one of the Southern Whale Fishery Company’s directors; James Peek senior’s signature was on the Company’s promissory note. It would have been in character for Enderby to suggest that, apart from some financial reparation for the boat, the incident be overlooked and put down to youthful exuberance – but there is no record of what action was taken.
The Fancy sailed for Sydney two days later, taking Dr Hallett and his sister, the oil from the Samuel Enderby and the pilot whales, a further large order from Munce for good
s from Elliott, and a letter from Munce to a friend, Tarrant, advising him to come to the settlement as second medical officer if he was fully qualified to do so.53
A sail had been sighted the day before, but it was another four days before the Sir James Ross under Captain Freeman, accompanied by his wife and 10-year-old daughter, finally arrived from London. This was the first of the expected three new whaling ships, with 260 barrels of oil and 600 pounds (272 kilograms) of whalebone taken from the Mozambique Channel and the Indian Ocean. Munce ‘won a wager with Mr King, of 4/ – touching the quantity of oil brought in by the Sir James Ross’.54
The Sir Edward Parry came in the next day, under Captain Distant, having made excellent passage of just three and a half months from London. The first mate was accompanied by his wife and a female companion. Finally the Lord Nelson, also from London, arrived the day after, under Captain Dobson; its mate Mr Hunt brought his wife and 11-year-old son. Considering this vessel first sighted the islands 10 whole days before it was able to make the shelter of Port Ross – it was driven south and east, where it ‘spoke’55 the Fancy, which had also been driven off course – it is remarkable these three whaling ships all made port within three days of one another.56
There was a mood of optimism and purpose in the settlement. However, Enderby was dismayed to discover that, once again, the new ships had been built to the wrong specifications, largely because the Earl of Hardwicke, who alone among the directors agreed with him, had not been there when critical decisions were make as to their design and where they should be built. He also found out that his recommendation for an expert shipwright and whaleman to superintend the building and equipping of the ships had been ignored. The result was that while they carried nearly 40 per cent less cargo, they had cost 60 per cent more than they should have done. As Chief Commissioner, Enderby had also stressed before he left England that experienced crews were essential, but it appeared that incompetent officers and men had been sent out by the directors.57 A charge of assault brought against Captain Dobson of the Lord Nelson by Mr Hunt was dismissed, but it emphasised the problems arising from inexperience and poor discipline.58
The Enderby Settlement Page 10
