The Enderby Settlement

by The Enderby Settlement (epub)

  Some 20 years earlier, in the late 1830s, sperm whales had been seen in huge schools of 500–600. Either persecution had made them wary, or the large numbers of whalers at sea had decimated them. The year 1846 was known as the boom year for American whaling; and after that, catches had steadily declined.42 Even tables in Enderby’s own Proposal indicated that although voyages for British ships were of increasing duration from 1800 to 1845, their returns showed a steady decrease from 1825 onwards.43

  Closer to the Auckland Islands, Enderby might well have reflected on the fortunes of Johnny Jones on the coast of Otago and Southland.44 The peak of whaling there had been from 1838 to 1839 when Jones, at the age of 30, had seven whaling establishments employing 280 men. By the time of the Enderby Settlement, Jones’ whaling operations were already in decline but his fortunes were on the increase because of his successful diversification into shipping and farming. The farming was based on good land near a reliable and guaranteed market – which could hardly be said of the Auckland Islands.

  An Auckland Island tit perched on a lichen-covered branch.

  In the key matter of whaling, there were the deviations from Enderby’s original proposal – a much smaller fleet than the 50, then 30 vessels he had recommended;45 the wrong size, high cost and poor equipping of ships; and the manning of the ships by inferior crews – because his advice had not been followed by the directors in London to have the ships built and crewed in America. Experienced crews were essential in pursuing the right whale, which Enderby had advocated as being more profitable around the Auckland Islands than the sperm whale fishery, in spite of the greater value of sperm case oil; and as the habits of sperm and right whales differed, competent whalemen were needed who knew how to hunt right whales in particular. The lack of such men had meant that Enderby had had to change his plans, and with vessels larger than necessary, pursue sperm whales instead.46 He was led to conclude: ‘I cannot discover a single feature of my project for prosecuting the Whale Fisheries from the Auckland Islands, as recommended in my pamphlet, as having been adopted by the Southern Whale Fishery Company, with the exception of their having made the Islands their whaling station.’47 And even this decision was considered misguided.

  Not that Enderby was blameless. He has been criticised for not keeping to his policy of short voyages with quick turnaround in sending the Brisk to the subantarctic Balleny Islands (admittedly an exploratory voyage), the Samuel Enderby on an eight-month voyage south and the Lord Duncan to the north of New Zealand; but it was Towns who sent the Earl of Hardwicke on the longest and farthest-ranging voyage of all, lasting just over a year, from Sydney to the Arctic Circle and back through the tropics.

  Enderby left Wellington in mid-July 1853.48 On a personal level, he had won a hollow victory over Dundas and Preston: hollow because his campaign against them was not over yet; and hollow because it was the end of his utopian dream for the Enderby Settlement.

  The giant daisy-like megaherb Pleurophyllum speciosum.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  End of the Dream

  As a magistrate, Munce would undoubtedly have given Mackworth support before the relieving man-of-war arrived from Hobart Town, or Dundas and Preston returned; but Mackworth must have still felt very much on his own after the Black Dog’s departure when he wrote, ‘I have not a man to trust to.’1 He may have felt this because he was troubled that Munce’s loyalty to Enderby had differed from his own. It had been a difficult time; but whether he liked it or not, as a servant of the Company he had been duty-bound to carry out the Special Commissioners’ orders.

  The next day, he took a church service. The congregation was reduced to ‘Mr Munce and a few children – probably the Munces’.

  On Monday, Mackworth decided to move the Company office and his personal effects to the Superior Quarters, as he now called Government House. At the same time Captain Freeman, Mr William Brown – formerly second mate of the Fancy, who now commanded the cutter – and George Cook all moved to better residences with their wives and families; this kept a large number of men busy all day. The fencing around Mackworth’s previous home was already being demolished and, no doubt with a passing thought to the time James Peek had been brought before him for burning shingles, he gave belated permission for the rest of the fence to be used as firewood. Soon after this, work started on dismantling the house itself, the carpenters checking that the boards and timbers were still clearly marked for reassembly.

  Keeping discipline and controlling the distribution of alcohol were still the two most volatile problems Mackworth had to contend with after the departure of Enderby and the Special Commissioners. In making an indent of the stores aboard the Fancy, he was disturbed to find someone had broken into the two remaining hogsheads of beer in the hold.2 ‘The grog question’, as he called it, seemed to be involved whenever there were problems; and at the moment there were more than enough of them. The Macquarie oiling party had made an ‘absurd claim’ for their share of the oil left behind on the island – a claim he had promptly quashed, although he had had no alternative but to pay them for work they had carried out aboard the Brisk on its return voyage. On the matter of pay, which had been causing a lot of argument, he decided to standardise rates: captains while in port would get £12 a month, first mates £6, second mates £5, coopers and carpenters £5, and able seamen £4.3

  Believing the Special Commissioners to have been far too lenient over the supply of alcohol generally, he next ruled that a daily sale of wine would be instituted in the following limited quantities: ‘To a Married man one and a half pints, to a Single man one pint, and to a Female whose Husband is absent half a pint.’ Half a pint of wine was also issued to each seaman, in addition to his allowance of beer.4

  People had seemed satisfied with these new regulations, so he was taken aback when Edward Gillett applied for an issue of several gallons. Mackworth pointed out that having so recently made a ruling, he could not possibly allow it. Gillett then respectfully informed him that ‘should any vessel arrive here with liquor on board he would run all risks in obtaining it clandestinely’.5 Mackworth had believed that Gillett, as pilot and unofficial customs agent, was someone he could completely depend upon to report on illicit liquor coming into the colony. But Gillett had been civil, and there was nothing he could do but warn him of the consequences of carrying out his threat.

  Not long afterwards, someone mentioned to Mackworth that two of the boys on the Brisk had challenged Captain Freeman to a fight. Finding this hard to believe, he went aboard to support the master’s authority, only to find that the captain had struck one of the lads, Riley, shortly before the incident. Captains were apparently as fallible as pilots. ‘In the situation in which I am placed,’ Mackworth wrote, ‘such occurrences as these are to the last degree exasperating;’ – then (later crossed through): ‘How my broken temper and debilitated health are to get through the next few months I cannot comprehend.’6 He made ‘an effort to drive away care’ that evening, when he and the medical officer each took a boatload of people to gather a good supply of cockles from the head of Laurie Harbour.

  Two days later, he was told that work on the Fancy had come to a standstill: apparently the cook had gone on strike until he received an increase in pay for feeding the extra men involved in stowing goods from the store and cooperage. Using his authority as Acting Commissioner, Mackworth gave the cook the option of getting on at once with the men’s supper or being sacked on the spot, and had the satisfaction of seeing both cook and men back at work when he left the ship shortly afterwards. He commented later, ‘There seems to be an idea amongst the People that my head and hands are magically to perform the duties of Magistrate, Gaoler, and Police force at once.’7

  Edward Gillett was not the only person to let Mackworth down over the grog question. On 4 May, he wrote:

  Mr George Cook, to whom I entrusted the sale of wine with confidence, has turned out a perfect rogue in the matter, he has squandered away the whole of two casks, paying
no attention to my orders, has been beating his wife, disturbing his neighbours, and refused to give up a supply of wine kept back for himself, contrary to orders. His Wife rushed into my room today begging for protection, having suffered from his violence. Assembled some of the Company’s servants and charged them to maintain order and protect Cook’s wife till the mad drunken fit has left the man.

  By morning, Cook was extremely contrite, saying this was the first time Mackworth had had to complain of his conduct, and that it would be the last.8

  Late in the morning of Friday 7 May, Mackworth was ‘relieved beyond measure’ by a report from some of the Maori back from tending their potato crop on Enderby Island, that a ship had been sighted off North West Cape. Gillett was sent off immediately and returned by dark to confirm that the ship, now becalmed off the east side of Enderby Island, was the British Navy’s Fantome.

  HMS Fantome, seven days out of Hobart Town, was a trim new 16-gun sloop with a crew of 132. It anchored abreast of the flagstaff at eight the following morning. A nine-gun salute, erratically delivered because of damp powder, was fired from the shore battery, and immaculately returned by the ship.

  The captain, Commander John Gennys, was at least 20 years older than Mackworth, but they soon discovered much in common. After handing over affairs on shore to Munce and the reformed George Cook, Mackworth spent most of the morning aboard and lunched at midday with the Fantome’s officers. In the afternoon, after he had shown Gennys around the settlement, they explored Laurie Harbour, bringing back another good haul of cockles. Gennys found his new surroundings fascinating, and they enjoyed each other’s company. As a midshipman on the Cambrian Gennys had taken part in the battle of Navarin and in the capture of numerous pirates, and four years later he had been shipwrecked during an attack on a pirate stronghold at Carabusa. His first command had been of the steamer Confiance in the Mediterranean in 18389 but his preference, like that of most naval men, was still for sail.

  On the Monday after the Fantome’s arrival, Commander Gennys and four of his officers dined with Mackworth and Munce. One of the officers was R.E. Malone, the ship’s purser10 – later author of Three Years’ Cruise in the Australasian Colonies.11

  Mackworth was crossing Port Ross the next morning to show the Fantome’s officers the sea lions on Enderby Island, when a ship came into sight – the Lord Duncan, returning from four months’ whaling to the south. The party boarded it, and the naval officers were greatly impressed as it was a fine ship, and Captain Barton the Company’s most experienced master mariner. But with the pick of his men on Macquarie Island, and much sickness aboard, he had only won 40 barrels of sperm oil and blubber – the yield of just one whale in yet another lost voyage. Reunited with his oiling gang, though, Captain Barton was hopeful of getting to sea again soon with a strong and willing crew.12

  Over the next few days, in squalls of hail and ‘severely wet, cold and boisterous’ weather, the settlement’s remaining two guns and gun carriages were shipped aboard the Brisk with the help of men from the Fantome. The ground-tier casks of the Lord Duncan were in poor condition and would need replacing; and because of the weather, it had not yet been possible to get the invalids ashore. At least Mackworth was able to record one piece of heartening news: ‘Our supply of malt liquor is exhausted – The unavoidable sobriety existing is a matter of great congratulation.’13

  At the end of May, after spending much of the day serving three months’ notice to a dozen of the Company’s servants entitled to it by their agreements – including Munce, Edward Gillett, Thomas Goodger and Isaac Cripps – Mackworth was startled by a shout of ‘Sail O!’ and was soon able to make out an approaching vessel in the gathering darkness. He expected it to be the Black Dog from Wellington, bringing the Special Commissioners, but it turned out to be the Earl of Hardwicke. In five months at sea they had seen whales only twice, and they had just 60 barrels of sperm oil aboard, the product of a single whale. It was a depressingly familiar story. The vessel had been close to the islands three weeks before, but had been blown off course, and had only now been able to make port. Five men were laid up with scurvy, four were in irons for refusal of duty, and one had died and been consigned to the deep only the day before, within sight of land. During the voyage the Earl of Hardwicke had spoke the Lord Nelson and had learnt that Captain Dobson had been landed at the Bay of Islands, reportedly in a dying state, and that several of its hands had deserted there.14

  Anisotome latifolia, of the carrot family.

  Commander Gennys, with some reluctance, agreed to try the Earl of Hardwicke’s four prisoners in a naval court aboard HMS Fantome, where they were sentenced to 12 weeks’ imprisonment on bread and water.

  Mackworth was grateful for Gennys’ support, as he found he had more disciplinary problems to cope with than usual, particularly with men refusing to sign on for the Lord Duncan’s forthcoming voyage, even if it was towards England; others were reluctant to work on the Fancy or to load heavy stores onto the Brisk. It seemed to Mackworth that ‘all the seamen as well as Officers in port are in league together, not to go to sea again on a whaling voyage’.15

  It was a shock to learn on 4 June that Gennys planned to leave in a fortnight. His reason appeared to be a shortage of bread and flour, which of course could be supplied from the Company’s store. Mackworth immediately had an urgent talk with him, followed by a formal letter explaining that not only was he ‘without the means of supporting my own authority as the representative of the Southern Whale Fishery Company, but destitute also of the means of punishing, or in any way checking, the villainy of reckless men, and protecting the lives and property of Her Majesty’s subjects under my orders’. The letter ended with the hope that Commander Gennys would postpone sailing at least until the return of the Special Commissioners.

  Widespread speculation about the Fantome’s early departure was affecting morale ashore; and the refusal of three more men to sail in the Lord Duncan, and of John Cook to serve as a mate aboard her, increased Mackworth’s concern. He wrote another letter to Gennys, pointing out that a repeat of past mutinous behaviour was possible, and that he was ‘convinced … that the New Zealanders resident here would eagerly seize any occasion of revolt on the part of seamen and others, to rise for the purposes of assault and plunder’.16

  For five days he received no response to this second letter. But he had the feeling his efforts had probably succeeded. To reduce the number of seamen in port he was anxious to get the Lord Duncan away as soon as possible. Two days later it sailed, ‘perfect as a whaler’, with orders to proceed northeast as far as the Equator and then work around New Guinea and through the Molucca passage to Timor in search of whales, before proceeding to England.17 Mackworth left the vessel near Shoe Island, to the customary exchange of cheers, and returned to the settlement with a great feeling of relief.

  A close friendship developed between Mackworth and Gennys, who had recently lost his wife, and who enjoyed the diversion of exploring in the almost impenetrable bush and returning wet through – though Mackworth confessed that he much preferred macadamised roads.18 Gennys confirmed that the Fantome would stay, and he and several of his officers spent a pleasant evening with Mackworth, the Munces and Mary Barton.

  Shortly before Enderby’s case against Dundas and Preston began in the Supreme Court in Wellington, the first and last whale of appreciable size – a female which had come into shallow waters to calve – was caught and killed within the harbour at Port Ross. Its companion had come within an ace of being harpooned, and several others had been sighted and chased in all directions until they finally headed towards the open sea. Two days after the kill, the signal was made from Ocean Point that gases in the bloated carcase had brought the whale to the surface. No fewer than five whaleboats and a pinnace and cutter from the Fantome converged on it, and under the efforts of 50 oars it was towed across the harbour against a stiff breeze. By two o’clock it was secured alongside the Fancy at the settlement, and cutting-in began imme
diately. R.E. Malone of the Fantome described the scene:

  It was quite a holiday in the settlement, every one, even the women, some of them with children at the breast, came to look at the beast. They did not remain long, however: it was a disgusting sight, and the stench was intolerable … On the first cut – or, as they called it, the bride-cut – the escape of foul air was so great, and the stench so unbearable, that I was sick for some time, and the noise was like the rush of steam from the boiler of a steam-engine …

  Even so, he later ‘got with ease inside the black, hairy-fringed mouth … It was a young cow-whale come in to calve, about 45 feet long, and yielded five tuns of oil and some whalebone.’19 The cutting-in was completed by evening. The following morning the odorous trying-out of the blubber began, and continued throughout the night.

  Whales had been sighted again at midday, and were chased until dark by three boats without success, although one boat came close to fastening twice. For five more days whales were seen and chased on several occasions. One was missed when the trigger of the gun broke;20 and George Cook struck a large bull at maximum range but the harpoon was spent and glanced off the whale’s back. It had been the most intensive bout of inshore whaling in the colony’s history, and should have met with much greater success: one modest-sized whale was hardly compensation for so many lost opportunities.21

  In the midst of all this excitement, carpenters had begun the task of building berths for married couples and families on board the Brisk, sailmakers were busy in the sail room ashore, and the loading of cargo into the Earl of Hardwicke continued steadily.

  Since the middle of June, as the weather allowed, the blacksmith’s stores and iron had been steadily loaded aboard the Brisk and the Earl of Hardwicke as ballast. Now, into July, the work of dismantling buildings and stowing stores aboard the ships was well advanced. Further heavy stores, firebricks and galvanised iron had gone into the holds, followed by barrel staves and coopers’ tools, building timber, chalk, and the doors, sashes and fixtures of the Special Commissioners’ former residence. Accommodation on the ships for married couples and families was almost completed. The blacksmith’s shop was about to be pulled down, and the cooperage would be next. The warehouse was looking very empty: only the provisions and items that would be needed for the final days remained. Already, a number of people were sleeping aboard the ships, as they had done when they first arrived.