The Enderby Settlement

by The Enderby Settlement (epub)

  18 Samuel Enderby is generally regarded as the founder of British whaling.

  19 Samuel Enderby to Sir Joseph Banks in a letter dated 26 August 1788, Library and Archives Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, JBK/1/4 Joseph Banks Correspondence, vol. 1, c. 1780s (folio 319).

  20 Email to author from Library and Archives Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, 6 February 2010.

  21 Melville, Moby Dick, ch. 101, ‘The Decanter’.

  22 Spears, The Story of the New England Whalers, p. 150.

  23 Extracts from a letter from Captain Shields to S. Enderby & Sons dated 6 March 1790, regarding the Emilia’s pioneering whaling voyage in the Pacific. Copy courtesy Mitchell Library Sydney, PRO Reel 7204: HO 42/16 ff 266-292 [51]. PRO London. Notes with reference to the Emilia’s voyage: C.H. Gordon, a relation of the Enderbys, states in ‘The Vigorous Enderbys’– the term used in praise of them by Herman Melville in Moby Dick – that Samuel Enderby had written to George Chalmers, the Company’s agent and a government official in Sydney, that his firm had fitted out a very fine ship, the Emilia, now ready to sail. According to Gordon, Samuel Enderby states in this letter (allegedly held at the Mitchell Library, Sydney) that the Enderbys were the only ‘adventurers willing to risk their property at such a great distance for the exploring of a fishery’. Gordon’s account goes on to say: ‘In 1789 the Emilia rounded Cape Horn into the Pacific, not only the first British ship, but the first among the nations to lower a whale-boat of any sort in the great South Sea.’ Gordon does not acknowledge the source of this second quote, but it comes from chapter 101 of Moby Dick. (Gordon’s typewritten manuscript ‘The Vigorous Enderbys’ is held by the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University, England. It is undated, but the final paragraph, quoting ‘Scott of the Antarctic’, would put it in the early years of the twentieth century.) E.W. Argyle, in an article on ‘The Enderbys of London’ in the British publication Sea Breezes (January 1956, p. 57, held at Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington) also states that Enderby’s letter to George Chalmers is in the Mitchell Library, Sydney – although he may well have taken his information from Gordon’s manuscript. In fact, the Mitchell Library has no record of ever having had such a letter; and a wide search elsewhere has failed to find it. However, the archives of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, has the very similar letter quoted in chapter 2 from Samuel Enderby to Sir Joseph Banks, with which C.H. Gordon may have been confused. This was also written with the Emilia ready ‘to depart in about a week’, and promoted the Enderbys as ‘considerable Adventurers in the Whale Fisheries’. The Mitchell Library was able to send me the even more valuable manuscript of Captain Shields’ report to the Enderbys of the Emilia’s pioneering voyage.

  Regarding the spelling of Emilia: Captain Shields, the Enderbys and Lloyd’s Register of Shipping use ‘Emilia’; Spears (The Story of the New England Whalers, p. 152) and Melville (Moby Dick) use ‘Amelia’.

  24 Melville, Moby Dick, ch. 101, ‘The Decanter’. The House of Enderby did indeed exist in 1851, the year Moby Dick was first published, although by that time it was in serious financial difficulties.

  25 Ibid.

  26 R. McNab, Murihiku: A history of the South Island of New Zealand and the islands adjacent and to the south, from 1642 to 1835, Whitcombe & Tombs, 1909, ch. VII. A hut was built and provisions and stores for a year were landed, during which time a small boat was built, the first to be constructed in Australasia solely from Australian and New Zealand timbers. By the time Raven returned, the gang had collected 4500 sealskins.

  27 A.G.E. Jones, extract from ‘Notes and Queries’, held by The Royal Society, London, box file 21a.

  28 Encyclopaedia Britannica: ‘Antarctic Exploration and Discovery’.

  29 A.G.E. Jones, extract from Enfield Parish Magazine, August 1957, held by The Royal Society, London, box file 21b.

  30 McNab, Murihiku.

  31 H.R. Mill, The Siege of the South Pole: The story of Antarctic exploration, Alston Rivers, 1905, p. 146.

  32 Corporation of London Records Office, CLRO CF1/1455. The apprenticeship was reduced to four years in 1889. With regard to Charles Enderby’s earlier schooling, there were a number of nationally well-known private schools in Greenwich and Blackheath at the time taking both day and boarding pupils, but details and records have been lost. Among these schools were Dr Charles Burney’s Academy in Croom Hill, Greenwich, where the Enderbys lived (the headmaster was the father of Fanny Burney the novelist); and Blackheath Preparatory School (where Disraeli went as a pupil). (Letter to author, Barbara Ludlow, Greenwich, 6 April 1998.)

  33 Ludlow, Barbara, ‘Whaling for oil, Journal of the Greenwich Historical Society, vol. 3, no. 4, 2007, p. 184.

  34 A.G.E. Jones, letter to Miss M. Raitt of 24 April 1969, Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University, England. Jones had a rather biased and cynical opinion of the Enderbys, and particularly of Charles and Henry, as this letter demonstrates.

  35 Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University, England, Table A: Descendants of Daniel Enderby.

  36 Ludlow, ‘Whaling for oil’, p. 181.

  37 Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. 47, 1877, p. cliii. Enderby was also a Fellow of the Linnean Society (Boase, Frederick, Modern English Biography, 1912, reprinted 1965, Vol V).

  38 The Royal Society, London, Certificate of Election, IX.33. MS Index of Fellows, Bulloch’s Roll.

  39 Enderby, Charles, Abstract of Reports from the Commissioner of the Southern Whale Fishery Company to the Directors, Pelham Richardson, London, 1850, p. 4; Enderby, Charles, A Statement of Facts Connected with the Failure of the Southern Whale Fishery Company at the Auckland Islands; A vindication of the measures proposed to be adopted for its success, Richardson Brothers, London, 1854, pp. 23–24.

  40 The first experiments with submarine cables were unsuccessful, but within a few years 2 miles of cable insulated with gutta percha had been tested by the Gutta Percha Company, and an undersea cable between England and France proposed. Hill, S. & A. Jeal, Greenwich: Centre for global telecommunications from 1850, Alcatel, London, 1999.

  41 Southern Cross, 7 October 1843.

  42 Ludlow, ‘Whaling for oil’, p. 188.

  43 Illustrated London News, 8 March 1845.

  44 Letter from Mr Preston, on behalf of certain parties connected with the British Shipping Interest, to Mr Enderby, London, 2 July 1846, and used as Preface to Enderby’s Proposal for Re-establishing the British Southern Whale Fishery.

  45 A.G.E. Jones, Ships Employed in the South Seas Trade, Roebuck Society, Canberra, 1986, p. 271.

  46 Charles Enderby, The Auckland Islands: A short account of their climate, soil, & productions; and the advantages of establishing there a settlement at Port Ross for carrying on the Southern Whale Fisheries. Pelham Richardson, London, 1849.

  47 R. McCormick RN, Voyages of Discovery in Arctic and Antarctic Seas and Around the World, Sampson Low, London, 1884, p. 299.

  48 Enderby, The Auckland Islands.

  49 Benjamin Morrell, A Narrative of Four Voyages, J. & J. Harper, New York, 1832.

  50 Enderby, The Auckland Islands.

  51 James Clark Ross, A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions During the Years 1839–1843, John Murray, London, 1847.

  52 Enderby, The Auckland Islands.

  53 Letter from Mr Preston.

  54 Enderby, Proposal for Re-establishing the British Southern Whale Fishery, pp. 7, 14.

  55 Proceedings at a Public Dinner at the London Tavern on 18 April 1849, 24 pp., Pelham Richardson, London, 1849.

  56 Times, 24 October 1849.

  Chapter Three: Settling In

  1 ESD.

  2 Abstract of Reports from the Commissioner of the Southern Whale Fishery Company to the Directors, Pelham Richardson, London, 1850, p. 13.

  3 Charles Fleming, ‘Two-storied cliffs at the Auckland Islands’, in Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Ze
aland: Geology, 8 December 1965, vol. 3, no. 11, pp. 71–74.

  4 F.E. Raynal, Wrecked on a Reef; or, Twenty Months among the Auckland Isles, Nelson, London, 1885.

  5 Fuller descriptions of the Erlangen saga, the shipwrecks and the wartime coastwatchers can be found in Conon Fraser, Beyond the Roaring Forties: New Zealand’s Subantarctic Islands, Government Printer, Wellington, 1986.

  6 Abstract of Reports, p. 16.

  7 Benjamin Morrell, A Narrative of Four Voyages, J. & J. Harper, New York, 1832.

  8 Ibid.

  9 ESD, 31 January 1850.

  10 Ibid., 4 February 1850.

  11 Ibid., 8 January 1850.

  12 William A. Mackworth, letter of 3 March 1850. Copied in a letter from Arabella Jeffreys Valpy of 28 July 1897, Hocken Library, Dunedin, MS-0451-011/ 011.

  13 New Zealand Spectator and Cook’s Strait Guardian, 21 June 1848.

  14 Auckland City Library, Special Collections, GL E23 (4).

  15 Auckland City Library, Special Collections, GL E23 (6).

  16 ESD, 14 February 1850.

  17 Abstract of Reports, p. 15.

  18 Robert Towns to Robert Newton Esq. of Sydney, 5 October 1852, Towns MSS, Mitchell Library, Sydney.

  19 Miles Lewis, ‘Prefabrication for the Gold Rushes’, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, Melbourne University, 1998.

  20 Paul R. Dingwall, Kevin L. Jones & Rachael Egerton (eds), In Care of the Southern Ocean: An archaeological and historical survey of the Auckland Islands, New Zealand Archaeological Association Monograph 27, Auckland, 2009.

  21 Lewis, ‘Prefabrication for the Gold Rushes’.

  22 Letter from Dr M.K. Banton, National Archives (formerly Public Record Office), Kew, England, to the author, 7 June 1996.

  23 Robert Carrick, Auckland Islands, quoting Thomas Younger, Alexander Turnbull Library, MS qMS0397, p. 18.

  24 Johannes Andersen, Old Christchurch in Picture and Story, Simpson & Williams, Christchurch, 1949, p. 275.

  25 ESD, 7 January 1852.

  26 House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers No. 369, London, 6 July 1855, p. 8.

  27 First Report of the Directors of the Southern Whale Fishery Company, presented at the Annual General Meeting of the Shareholders, 21 February 1850, W. Lewis & Son, London, 16 pp. Held at Mitchell Library, Sydney, 997. 9/S, p. 9.

  28 Fergus B. McLaren, The Eventful Story of the Auckland Islands. A.H. & A.W. Reed, Wellington, 1948, p. 109.

  29 Charles Enderby, A Statement of Facts Connected with the Failure of the Southern Whale Fishery Company at the Auckland Islands: A vindication of the measures proposed to be adopted for its success, Richardson Brothers, London, 1854, pp. 20–21.

  30 Charles Enderby, Proposal for re-establishing the British Southern Whale Fishery through the medium of a Chartered Company and in combination with the colonisation of the Auckland Islands as the site of the Company’s Whaling Station, Effingham Wilson, London, 1847, p. 41.

  31 Abstract of Reports, p. 4.

  32 Enderby, Statement of Facts, pp. 23–24.

  33 Abstract of Reports, p. 4.

  34 Enderby, Statement of Facts, p. 23.

  35 It is very likely that James Eber Bunker was the grandson of Captain Eber Bunker, master of the Enderby vessel William and Ann (B.I. Fotheringham, ‘The Southern Whale Fishery Company, Auckland Islands’, MPhil thesis, Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University, England, 1995, p. 103). Eber Bunker had brought convicts out to Sydney in 1791, and was the first to visit Dusky Sound in Fiordland purely for trading purposes, because the Governor of New South Wales was interested in procuring flax for cloth manufacturing, as well as the services of two ‘natives of New Zealand’ who had the knowledge needed to process it. (R. McNab, Murihiku: A history of the South Island of New Zealand and the islands adjacent and lying to the south, from 1642 to 1835, Whitcombe & Tombs, 1909, ch. VII, p. 90.)

  36 Valentine Smith in fact never got further than the Wairarapa, just north of Wellington (Letter to author from Gareth Winter, Archivist, Masterton District Council, 31 July 2008); see also Epilogue, n. 17.

  37 Mackworth, letter of 3 March 1850. Mackworth must have kept his own copy of this letter, which was copied later by Arabella Jeffreys Valpy. It is Mackworth’s only recorded correspondence of a personal nature, although he would undoubtedly have written other letters home. In ESD, for example, he refers on 1 August 1850 to sending away three personal letters. Unfortunately, efforts to find these letters over the years have failed, because the extensive Mackworth family archives are in some disarray after a change of location. The letter was referred to but not quoted by Fergus B. McLaren (with no indication as to where he found it, or the fact it was a letter home to Mackworth’s mother) on pp. 61–66 of his thesis and subsequently in his book The Eventful Story of the Auckland Islands. The thesis is held by the Hocken Library, as is the letter: Hocken Library, MS 0451-011/ 011. If the letter left on the Artemisia, that would have been over a fortnight since Mackworth belatedly began it; or it may have left on the Lucy Ann, four days later. Otherwise, it might have had to wait until 26 April for the Augusta to sail.

  38 Dominion, 6 December 1926.

  39 Transcribed from Radio New Zealand Women’s Hour and supplied by descendant Sarah Howell of Dannevirke. Radio Archives have no record of the talk or when it went to air. However, it was almost certainly written by Celia and Cecil Manson, as it closely resembles an article of theirs entitled ‘Wairarapa Worthies No. 3: Granny Cripps, a famous hostess of the nineties’, Dominion, 3 April 1954.

  40 Ibid.

  41 ESD, 17 April 1850. Enderby had another epileptic fit on 22 October 1850, after asking Dr Hallett to resign after his sister attacked him; no doubt there were other occasions, such as after his humiliation over Downs’ burial, at the end of ch. 10.

  42 Abstract of Reports, p. 23.

  43 Enderby, Statement of Facts, pp. 22–23.

  44 Mackworth, letter of 3 March 1850. The ‘ugly’ sea lion Mackworth refers to was presumably a bull, as the female is rather beautiful!

  45 ESD, 21 May 1850.

  46 Southern Cross, 29 March 1850, repeated in NZ Journal, 24 August 1850.

  47 Wellington Independent, 27 March 1850.

  48 New Zealand Spectator and Cook’s Strait Guardian, 14 August 1850.

  49 Wellington Independent, 14 August 1850.

  Chapter Four: Mackworth and Munce

  1 ESD, 7 August 1850.

  2 Ibid., 8–13 August 1850.

  3 Ibid., 18 August 1850.

  4 Ibid., 2, 7 September 1850.

  5 Ibid., 9, 12, 14, 16 August 1850.

  6 Ibid., 10 April 1850.

  7 Ibid., 24 August 1850.

  8 Ibid., 31 August 1850. ‘Awarru’ is the spelling used in ESD.

  9 Ibid., 4 September 1850.

  10 Ibid., 28 August 1850.

  11 Ibid., 13 September 1850.

  12 Ibid., 12 September 1850.

  13 Ibid., 21 September 1850.

  14 Ibid., 21 September 1850.

  15 Ibid., 26 September 1850.

  16 Ibid., 1 October 1850.

  17 Ibid., 24 September 1850.

  18 Ibid., 2–13 October 1850.

  19 Ibid., 14 October 1850.

  20 Ibid., 17–19 October 1850.

  21 Ibid., 21 October 1850.

  22 Ibid., 21–22 October 1850.

  23 Ibid., 22 October 1850.

  24 Ibid., 24 October 1850.

  25 Ibid., 26 October 1850.

  26 Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage, 1959, pp. 1454–55; Debrett’s Illustrated Baronetage, 1958, p. 565. The Mackworth family is of great antiquity in Shropshire and Derbyshire; the name is taken from the parish of Mackworth. One of its members fought at the battle of Poitiers in 1356, as an aide-de-camp to Edward the Black Prince. Later, Sir Francis Mackworth, a distinguished royalist, fought on the side of Charles I; while Colonel Humphrey Mackworth, MP for Salop, was one of Cromwell’s Council. Burke’s has an interesting commentary on the divided
political loyalties of the time, quoting the House of Commons journal of 27 August 1651: ‘Resolved, that notice be taken by the Parliament of the great fidelity and courage of Col. Mackworth, and that a chain of gold, with the medal of Parliament, to the value of £100, be sent to Col. Mackworth, Gov. of Shrewsbury, as a mark of the Parliament’s favour.’ He was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey, 26 December 1654; but Charles II had his remains removed, on 12 September 1660, from Henry VII’s chapel, and thrown into a pit in the churchyard of St Margaret’s adjoining.

  27 Archives, Westminster School, London.

  28 Venn’s Alumni Cantabrigienses.

  29 Letter to author from Dr E.S. Leedham-Green, Cambridge University Library Archives, 9–11 February 1998; also, letter to author from Jonathan Smith, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, 25 March 1998, stating: ‘Students were wont to waste the best part of their first two years in the misguided hope that they would be able to catch up in their third year. Until 1850 University students were not allowed to proceed to honours in classics without first performing well in mathematics.’ So each year, to keep track of how its students were progressing, the college examination tested maths and classics together. ‘It is in this examination that Mackworth failed to distinguish himself.’

  30 ESD, 27 October 1850.

  31 The late Pauline Goodger, personal communication and letters to author 1998–99. The name was to go down through the Goodger family for generations until the late 1990s, by which time its significance was forgotten by its bearer, and was only revealed by his wife Pauline Goodger’s research at the Canterbury Museum.

  32 Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, recorded in Fergus McLaren, The Eventful Story of the Auckland Islands, A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1948, app. XIII, p. 109.

  Chapter Five: Otago Interlude

  1 C.H.E. Fulton, unpublished autobiography of Mrs James Fulton (née Catherine Valpy), 1915, Hocken Library, Dunedin, MS 846.