The Enderby Settlement

by The Enderby Settlement (epub)

  24 Ibid.

  25 Dingwall et al., In Care of the Southern Ocean, p. 2. The total area of Enderby Island, the group’s third largest, is a modest 710 hectares, as compared with 10,119 hectares for Adams Island, which in turn is a fifth of the size of the main island at 50,990 hectares.

  26 ESD, 5 July 1851.

  27 Ibid., 8 July 1851.

  28 Ibid., 21 August 1851.

  29 Ibid., 22 July, 13 September 1851.

  30 Ibid., 19, 28 August 1851.

  31 Ibid., 7, 16 August 1851.

  32 Ibid., 1 September 1851.

  33 Ibid., 31 August–2 September 1851.

  34 Ibid., 7–8 September 1851.

  35 Ibid., 8 October 1851.

  36 Ibid., 24 September 1851.

  37 McLaren, The Eventful Story of the Auckland Islands, app. III.

  38 ESD, 21 January 1851.

  39 Ibid., 22 October 1851.

  40 Ibid., 9 September, 12 October 1851.

  41 Dr William Ewington. A search of Sydney and Tasmanian newspapers has failed to find mention of Dr Ewington’s recruitment in New South Wales or Tasmania. The Sydney Morning Herald of 1 October 1851, reporting Governor Enderby’s ‘arrival from the Bay of Islands’ on 30 September, includes Dr and Mrs Ewington among the passengers. So Dr Ewington was recruited either in New Zealand or in Tasmania, if the Black Dog called at Hobart Town before reaching Sydney. Dr and Mrs Ewington left Sydney for the Auckland Islands with Enderby on 16 October 1851 (Sydney Morning Herald, 17 October 1851).

  42 ESD, 8 July 1851.

  43 Ibid., 28 July 1851.

  44 Ibid., 10 November 1851.

  45 Ibid., 28 November 1851.

  46 Ibid., 11 November 1851.

  47 Enderby, Statement of Facts, p. 4.

  48 Ibid., p. 27.

  49 ESD, 13 November 1851.

  50 B.I. Fotheringham, ‘The Southern Whale Fishery Company, Auckland Islands’, MPhil thesis, Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University, England, June 1995, p. 104.

  51 ESD, 28 November 1851.On the list of passengers Munce has Mrs Stone, but she was in fact Mrs Stove. Munce also has L.A. Lomax marrying Esther Davies on this date, which was correct. But Fergus McLaren – who was liable to occasional errors – has Esther Davies marrying ‘Thomas’ Lomax, sawyer. McLaren also has Eliza Hyde marrying both Thomas Dawson and (incorrectly) William Munce! (The Eventful Story of the Auckland Islands, app. III, p. 109). Note that ESD has ‘People of the Settlement’ entries on p. 254 for both James Lomax, company servant and constable, and/or Thomas Lomax, Company servant and sawyer.

  52 ESD, 4 December 1851.

  53 Ibid., 11 December 1851.

  54 Enderby, Statement of Facts, p. 4.

  55 Ibid., pp. 3–4.

  56 ESD, 18 December 1851.

  Chapter Nine: Maquarie Island Episode

  1 ESD, 8 November 1851.

  2 J.S. Cumpston, Macquarie Island, Antarctic Division, Department of External Affairs, Australia, 1968, fn, p. 76, quoting John Cook’s log, originally in the Auckland Public Library.

  3 There were five Cooks or Cookes at the Enderby Settlement: John Cook, first mate of the Lord Duncan; Thomas Cook, second mate of the Lord Duncan; William Cook or Cooke, landsman; Richard Cooke, Company servant with wife and three children; and George Cook, qualified ship’s master, formerly first mate of the Brisk, interpreter and now ships’ husband, with his wife Matilda.

  4 Cumpston, Macquarie Island, p. 77, quoting John Cook’s log.

  5 ESD, 11 December 1851.

  6 Cumpston, Macquarie Island, pp. 75–76.

  7 ESD, 11 December 1851.

  8 Cumpston, Macquarie Island, p. 75, quoting Wilkes.

  9 R.A. Falla, ‘Antarctic birds’, in Frank Simpson (ed.) The Antarctic Today, A.H. & A.W. Reed, Wellington, 1952, p. 223.

  10 Cumpston, Macquarie Island, p. 77.

  11 ESD, 15 November 1851.

  12 Cumpston, Macquarie Island, p. 76.

  13 A letter from the Acting Director of Customs in Dunedin in 1886 describes Macquarie Island from reports he was given as having no bush or scrub, only ‘tussocks, and a kind of Maori Cabbage [which] resembled a pumpkin in leaf and when boiled was good eating, something like cabbage … bearing a large white bloom like a cauliflower’ (Letter No. 273/ 86, from C.W. Chamberlain, Acting Director of Customs in Dunedin, to the Secretary of the Marine Department in Wellington, 25 August 1886). John Cook, leader of the oiling gang, described it as rhubarb – probably with reference to its large leaves: ‘the flats from the beach to the foot of the mountains are covered with wild Rhubarb, and long grass, forming a good cover for the Elephants which come up here’ (Cumpston, Macquarie Island, p. 77). The plant was almost certainly Stilbocarpa polaris, which with tussock grasses covers the low-lying swampy ground and gives the elephant seals protection from the wind.

  14 Conon Fraser, Beyond the Roaring Forties: New Zealand’s subantarctic islands, Government Printer, 1986, p. 89. Castaways, who came after the sealers and Enderby settlers on the Auckland Islands, also recognised the palatability and nutritional value of Stilbocarpa polaris, which is allied to ginseng. On Disappointment Island, survivors of the Dundonald baked the roots and either grated them or ate them like potatoes (Beyond the Roaring Forties, pp. 49–50).

  15 Cumpston, Macquarie Island, pp. 77–78.

  16 Extract from John Cook’s log, quoted in R.E. Malone, Three Years’ Cruise in the Australasian Colonies, Bentley, London, 1854, p. 75.

  17 Fraser, Beyond the Roaring Forties, p. 85.

  18 Extract from John Cook’s log, quoted in Cumpston, Macquarie Island, p. 78.

  19 Had they thought of exploiting and harvesting penguins, and in fact at the time had the technological means of rendering them down, their haul would have been much greater; but the possibility of extracting oil from such a vast and conveniently close colony never occurred to them, as it did to Joseph Hatch of Invercargill some 40 years later. Beginning with elephant seals and king penguins, Hatch later concentrated his efforts on the huge colonies of smaller royal penguins at the Nuggets in the south, where the birds were clubbed to death by the thousands – as many as 2700 birds a day at the height of the season – and cooked in ‘digesters’, from which the oil was collected, cooled and stored (Fraser, Beyond the Roaring Forties, p. 139).

  20 Cumpston, Macquarie Island, p. 76.

  21 The oil was finally recovered in 1853, the year after the abandonment of the Enderby Settlement (Malone, Three Years Cruise, p. 75, quoting extract from John Cook’s log).

  Chapter Ten: The Special Commissioners

  1 ESD, 19 December 1851.

  2 Rear Admiral Dundas was a strong supporter of Charles Enderby and had presided over the farewell dinner given in his honour at the London Tavern. Although he is entered in the Navy List and biographies as Sir James Whitley Deans Dundas, Admiral Dundas was in fact the son of a Dr James Deans, and took the surname of Dundas on marrying his first cousin Janet, daughter and heiress of Charles Dundas, Lord Amesbury (The Dictionary of National Biography, vol. VI, From the Earliest Times to 1900, Oxford University Press, 1998).

  3 M. Stenton (ed.), Who’s Who of British Members of Parliament, Vol. 1, 1832–85: A biographical dictionary of the House of Commons, The Harvester Press (Courtesy Parliamentary Archives, Houses of Parliament, London).

  4 Fergus McLaren, The Eventful Story of the Auckland Islands, A.H. & A.W. Reed, Wellington, 1948, p. 59.

  5 Charles Enderby, A Statement of Facts connected with the Failure of the Southern Whale Fishery Company at the Auckland Islands, Richardson Bros, London, 1854, p. 58.

  6 Enderby, Statement of Facts, pp. 37–38. Robert Towns, the Company’s agent in Sydney, proposed setting up a store at Port Ross, but this was not allowed by the directors. Also, ‘The fact of the Company keeping a general store and prohibiting the opening of any other … precluded the wives of the Company’s servants from opening shops which they would otherwise have done.’

  7 Ibid., p. 21.


  8 ESD, 31 December 1851. A ships’ husband was an agent appointed to look after the provisioning, repairs and general maintenance of all the Company’s ships in port.

  9 R.E. Malone, Three Years’ Cruise in the Australasian Colonies, Bentley, London, 1854, p. 74.

  10 ESD, 7 January 1852. OS: ordinary seaman; AB: able-bodied seaman or rating, an experienced sailor.

  11 Ibid., 7 January 1852.

  12 Conon Fraser, Beyond the Roaring Forties: New Zealand’s subantarctic islands, Government Printer, 1986, p. 33.

  13 Enderby, Statement of Facts, p. 58.

  14 Official Reports of the Special Commissioners of the Southern Whale Fishery Company to the Court of Directors, from 23 January to 21 February 1852, in House of Commons Parliamentary Papers No. 369, London, 6 July 1855, pp. 65–66.

  15 Statement No. 7 of William Ewington, in House of Commons Parliamentary Papers No. 369, London, 6 July 1855, p. 55.

  16 Official Reports of the Special Commissioners to the Court of Directors. Parliamentary Papers No. 369, London, 6 July 1855, p. 66.

  17 Parliamentary Papers No. 369, London, 6 July 1855, p. 1, no. 1. Letter, Enderby to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 4 September 1852.

  18 Enderby, Statement of Facts, p. 6.

  19 Ibid., pp. 3–4.

  20 Parliamentary Papers, 6 July 1855, p. 6.

  21 Ibid., p. 33.

  22 ESD, 25 December 1851; 4 January 1852.

  23 Parliamentary Papers No. 122, London, 14 February 1853, p. 7, no. 1.

  24 Ibid., p. 7, no. 2.

  25 Ibid., p. 7, no. 3.

  26 Ibid., p. 8, no. 5.

  27 Ibid., p. 8, no. 6.

  Chapter Eleven: The Downs Crisis

  1 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 Bros, London, 1854. Enderby’s wording, though not the meaning of the charges, differs slightly from Dundas and Preston’s version of the charges as recorded in the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers of 14 February 1853.

  2 Ibid., pp. 5, 7.

  3 Ibid., pp. 41–44.

  4 Ibid., p. 8.

  5 Ibid., pp. 57–58.

  6 Ibid., pp. 54–55.

  7 Ibid., p. 39.

  8 Ibid., p. 39.

  9 Ibid., p. 53.

  10 Abstract of Reports from the Commissioner of the Southern Whale Fishery Company to the Directors, Pelham Richardson, London, 1850, pp. 9, 10.

  11 Enderby, Statement of Facts, pp. 9–10.

  12 Ibid., p. 56.

  13 Ibid., p. 57.

  14 Ibid., p. 54. Although Enderby wrote this after the settlement was disbanded, the man’s identity remains a matter for speculation. Rodd would soon be used by the Special Commissioners, but was not in their favour, and was never promoted by them. Mackworth was away and not known to the Commissioners until after they had laid their charges against Enderby, although they certainly promoted him to ‘Acting Commissioner of the Company under their orders’ (ESD, 23 February 1852) and used him for their ‘dirty work’ after his return. However, he did not go to Sydney on the disbanding of the settlement, but stayed in Otago to marry Juliet Valpy. Finally, Enderby had a high opinion of Thomas Goodger and Munce, and no doubts as to their loyalty. It is true that Dundas and Preston, after relieving George Cook of his duties, entered into a new arrangement with him (ESD, 31 December 1851); but unless some strong incentive was offered, he is more likely to have gone directly to the Bay of Islands than to Sydney on the break-up of the settlement. Enderby makes no further mention of this matter, or indication as to who the person might have been.

  15 There were three Greys. As well as Governor Grey of New Zealand, there was Earl Grey, the British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies from 1846–52. (He was succeeded in 1852 by Sir John Pakington and then in the same year the Duke of Newcastle.) Later, there was a Rt Hon Sir George Grey, Bart., writing, for example, to the New Zealand government from Downing Street on 5 August 1854, when he was Secretary of State for the Colonies, and referring to consultation with former Governor Sir George Grey (House of Commons Parliamentary Papers No. 369, London, 6 July 1855, p. 68).

  16 Parliamentary Papers No. 122, 14 February 1853, p. 3, no. 5.

  17 B.I. Fotheringham, ‘The Southern Whale Fishery Company, Auckland Islands’, MPhil thesis, Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University, England, June 1995, p. 106.

  18 Fotheringham, p. 103; Official Reports of the Special Commissioners of the Southern Whale Fishery Company to the Court of Directors, from 23 January to 21 February 1852, in House of Commons Parliamentary Papers No. 369, London, 6 July 1855, p. 66.

  19 No details of catches or oil tunnage from these particular voyages given in (a) Fotheringham, (b) ESD or (c) A Statement of Facts.

  20 Fotheringham, ‘The Southern Whale Fishery Company’, p. 106.

  21 ESD, p. 220.

  22 Re spelling of the name Downes or Downs: the Special Commissioners had Downes, as had Rodd on the death certificate. But Mackworth had Downs (ESD, 22 February 1852), as did Enderby – e.g. in his letter regarding John Edward Downs to Peel of 28 October 1854, in Parliamentary Papers of 6 July 1855.

  23 Official Reports of the Special Commissioners of the Southern Whale Fishery Company to the Court of Directors, from 23 January to 21 February 1852. In House of Commons Parliamentary Papers No. 369, London, 6 July 1855, p. 66.

  24 Ibid.

  25 Ibid.

  26 Parliamentary Papers No. 369, 6 July 1855, p. 64.

  27 Official Reports of the Special Commissioners of the Southern Whale Fishery Company to the Court of Directors, from 23 January to 21 February 1852; in House of Commons Parliamentary Papers No. 369, London, 6 July 1855, p. 66.

  28 Manuscript letter, Enderby to Sir William Molesworth, Secretary of State for the Colonies. PRO CO 209/ 134. 7895, New Zealand, 20 August 1855, p. 320.

  29 Official Reports of the Special Commissioners of the Southern Whale Fishery Company to the Court of Directors, from 23 January to 21 February 1852, in House of Commons Parliamentary Papers No. 369, London, 6 July 1855, p. 66.

  30 Parliamentary Papers No. 369, 6 July 1855, p. 64.

  31 Enderby, letter to F. Peel, Esq., MP, Downing Street, London, 28 October 1854, in House of Commons Parliamentary Papers No. 369, London, 6 July 1855, p. 50.

  32 Statement of William Ewington, MD, in House of Commons Parliamentary Papers No. 369, London, 6 July 1855, p. 55.

  33 Official Reports of the Special Commissioners of the Southern Whale Fishery Company to the Court of Directors, from 23 January to 21 February 1852, in House of Commons Parliamentary Papers No. 369, London, 6 July 1855, p. 66.

  34 Enderby, letter to F. Peel, 28 October 1854, Parliamentary Papers, 1855, p. 51.

  35 Ibid., p. 50.

  36 Enderby, letter to Sir William Molesworth, 20 August 1855, pp. 304, 305, 312. Public Records Office CO 209/134-7895 New Zealand.

  37 Parliamentary Papers No. 369, 6 July 1855, p. 64.

  38 Enderby, letter to F. Peel, Parliamentary Papers, 6 July 1855, p. 48.

  39 Statement of William Ewington in Parliamentary Papers, 6 July 1855, p. 56.

  40 Enderby, Statement of Facts, pp. 44–45. With Mackworth on the returning Fancy were Mrs Ross and Captain Stove’s wife and two children (Sydney Empire, 9 February 1852, p. 2).

  41 ESD, 12 May 1851.

  42 Parliamentary Papers, 6 July 1855, p. 33.

  43 Ibid., p. 34.

  44 Ibid.

  45 Ibid., p. 53.

  Chapter Twelve: Enderby Under Siege

  1 House of Commons Parliamentary Papers No. 122, London, 14 February 1853, p. 9, no. 7.

  2 Ibid., p. 9, no. 8.

  3 Ibid., p 13.

  4 ESD, 25 February 1852.

  5 Ibid., 25 February 1852.

  6 House of Commons Parliamentary Papers No 369, London, 6 July 1855, p. 36.

  7 Ibi
d., p. 8.

  8 Parliamentary Papers, 1853, p. 15.

  9 ESD, 27 February 1852.

  10 Parliamentary Papers, 1853, p. 15.

  11 Ibid., 28 February 1852.

  12 Ibid., 28, 29 February 1852.

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

  14 ESD, 27 December 1851.

  15 Ibid., 3 March 1852.

  16 Parliamentary Papers, 1855, p. 35.

  17 Ibid.

  18 ESD, 4–6 March 1852.

  19 Ibid., 6 March 1852.

  Chapter Thirteen: Rights and Wrongs of Passage

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

  2 ESD, 8 March 1852.

  3 House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, London, 1855, p. 37.

  4 Parliamentary Papers No. 122, 14 February 1853, p. 10.

  5 Parliamentary Papers, 1853, pp. 10–11.

  6 ESD, 12 March 1852.

  7 Ibid., 22–24 March 1852.

  8 Ibid., 9 March 1852.

  9 Parliamentary Papers, 1853, p. 5.

  10 Ibid.

  11 Parliamentary Papers, 1855, p. 37.

  12 Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, at Auckland Islands, held by Registrar General, NZ. Listed in Fergus B. McLaren, The Eventful Story of the Auckland Islands, A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1948, app. XIII, p. 109.

  13 ESD, 9 March 1852.

  14 ESD, 17 March 1852.

  15 Ibid.

  16 Ibid., 18 March 1852.

  17 Ibid., 19, 25 March 1852.

  18 Parliamentary Papers, 1853, p. 4.

  19 Ibid., p. 15 (end of letter of 18 May 1852: Enderby in Wellington to Sir George Grey).