REMINISCENCES OF ANOLD WHALER.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10333, 29 April 1899, Page 10

REMINISCENCES OF ANOLD WHALER.

ii.— banks pisntnsula between 1840 AND 1850. I*ECOI_LECTIONi~bF MR PHILIP RYAN. (BY. OUB SPECIAL BErOBTEB.) In the year of grace 1802 was born Philip Ryan, sailor, pioneer and adventurer of the! south, and after ninety-seven" stormy and stressful years of strange experiences over nearly all the globe, he lies now, a battered old man, away up in a long guUy of a Maori reserve, on Banks Peninsula, near Little . River. The old man's memory, though fail- • ing, is still wonderfully clear and bright for one of his extreme age, and he recounts with surprising exactness ■ occurrences which took •* place away back in the beginning of the cen--1 tury. He was born in Cork, Ireland, and 1 through his father's connection with the army commissariat department, he went to Spain and spent his boyhood among the rank and file of the army that was crying to break the power of Napoleon Buonaparte, when the glamour of his fame and the feats - of his arms were attracting and concentrating the attention of the civilised world Afterwards he became a.sailor, and made many voyages to foreign parts from London. He also served in the Royal Navy for a while, and finally drifted to. the southern seas. But it is best to tell his" story in his own' words, as.he related it to a representative of "The Press" in his little whare "among the hills some days ago. The interviewer first introduced h-ii->*n4f .to his son, a mere boy of fifty-five or so, and one of the most grandly-proportioned men' in the island. "Dick" Ryan, as he is called, generally, nurses and attends to his father, and the two of them live alone and undisturbed in the lonely gully. They are hidden from theworld by the flanking spurs of the\ great rangej and there probably the old man will end his days. "My father is" very poorly to-day," said "Dick," "but I will see if he is well enough to talk to you." Luckily he was, although very' weak and fraiL He lay, a wasted figure, on his bunk,' and extended a feeble , hand to be shaken. Having related his early history, much" as it appears above, the old man continued: — "I first set eyes on iNew Zealand in 1833, when my ship, the Charles I. anchored in the Bay of Islands, on her voyage from Peru with oil and general' merchandise. There ' were, a few ntissionaries about even then, but the place had a wild, savage appearance, and" the unfortunate missionaries looked as if they'had lost all hops of ever seeing a civilised land'again. After we resximed our voyage we fell in with evil weather, and became cast away on the island of Huaheine, one of the Society group. We found a missionary there named Mr Batt, who had lived ! on the island for nineteen years. After'some [ weeks I got away with natives in a canoe to • Otaheite, a voyage" of 120 miles. There I > found a man named' Johnston engaged in ' building a little vessel. All the ships 1 had left that ' year, so I set to ( i work and helped. him to build ; L i his craft. - I made the sails and mast • j and rigging, and in six months we had com- ■ pleted her. - Johnston bought some of the' ' j oil from the vessel T had been cast away _a, j and some sugar and', arrowroot from the ! natives, and we got three natives to como • with us as sailors, isad with an old watch • and a piece of chart-we started for Sydney. I We had an adventurous voyage, and a l tedious one, but eventually we reached , i Sydney safely. We named our vessel the- , Ulietia, after one of theislajnds. -, It wis f the end of 1834 when we reached Sydney,, • and I worked from there .for, three, shore j voyages, arid did very, well. At-any racy , '"it was better than ' stopping in" Sydney. ; The place,was a hell upon earth, and the ' scenes I have witnessed there would maka ; the hair st-.jnd up on your head. Every j night there were fights and rows. I have ' often heard women, and men, too, scream- ■ ' ing 'Murder! murder!'" j The old man stopped, and for a while j seemed lost- in thought; while he recalled, to 1 . his memory fragments from a far back past. ■' After a- while he resumed. "It was a 1 ' small place then, not many houses,- and ram ran like water. There was nothing,out rum. It was dangerous to drink anything. The stuff was poison. The publicans drugged all they sold. The first ship that came to Sydney with in-tn_i-£rr_nts was The' Wave, from. Scotland.- Her- passengers., were principally - women, and ne;rly every one of them went to the bad. It was a' fearful place; a terrible place, indeed. At this time it was declared a free settlement, and emigration set in fast, so-that wages came down ahno-t to nothing." '' Mr Ryan went on to say that he was t-m----ployed by a firm of whalers called WaUer and Son, and in the .beginning of 1839 whs sent as cooper to Dunedin in the schooner .Return. He landed on March 17th, 1839, 'and the date is impressed.on his memory . by an occurrence which took place the day after he landed. He and the cooper he bad i come to assist decided' to take turn about ■ to go for the grog in the morning and evening. On the day.in auestion the man's wife had cooked some damper, and while ■ j her husband was away getting the wherewith ' to wash it.down, a Maori chief, the father of the Hon. H. K. Taiaroa, came to the • whare, and took the bread from her, "I went after him," continued Mr Ryan, "and, after a fight, I got the.bread. The cooper was in a dre*idful, fright. ■ 'Man, 1 man!' he S3id to mc, 'you'll get us all killed for this.' 'Killed be d——d,' I replied. 'You'll never do here,' he said. 'You hadbetter go back to Sydney.' However, I ' stayed there for a while, and afterwards went in the Return to Timaru, where we did some • whaling. '"Fitted out by Mr Waller," continued the 1 old man, "we came to the Peninsula in December, 1840. A wild, rugged 'shop' it was, solid bush, and hardly a soul on the whole [ place. There were only three Maoris at Oashore when we began operations. There were some run-away sailors about who had left ships at AkaToa and elsewhere,! And a ' bad lot they were.' There were whaling sta- , tions at Peraki and Akoroa. and Mr Price ' had a station at Bxeraki, in addition to our station at Oashore. It is not easy to imagine that the Peninsula, now settled and carrying 1 sheep *>nd cattle, was a mass oi uninviting and gloomy bush. Here and there in the bays forlornlooking whaling stations were "to be discovered, and there were'some Maori settlements on the coast. It was rare that even a passing ship relieved the monotony. While I was at Oashore the first ship-load of emigrants, it was the Comte de Paris, anchored to bury her dead- iaj?igeon Bay. We heard the guns fired when Contain Stanley hoisted the lag at Akaroa. .We' were whaling at Oashore, when a lieutenant and boat's, crew came off from H.M.S. Britomart and asked if we bad seen anything of any French ship. It happened that that - day a man named "Holy Joe" had come across to Oashore from Pigeon Bay, and was stopping in my house. It was late in the afternoon, and a beautiful day. the sun shining and the water calm, one of "the first really fine days after the winter, '.- when the officer arrived 'Have you seen '" -any Frenchmen settling round herer he ' asked. 'No.' said I. 'but here is a man come from the other side.' Then I said to Joe. 'did you see anyone landing at Pigeon- Bay?' He answered" that as he had come through he had seen, where the French had been marking tbe/r' v . names on the trees. The officer pricked'up hia ears., and went off at once. They got back to the ship in daylight, and -at dawn despatches ' were sent everywhere. A party -was-sent over the hills, with Maoris, asv guides, to Pigeon Bay, and ■ parties*went in boats into all the bays on the : way to Akaroa to hoist the Sag. The French i man-o'-war arrived next day, and weren't ■■ they disgusted. It was agreed that the emi-. grants who arrived two or, three days* late .at . Akaroa could,have their cboicc whether they ' would go_back or stay. Some went back and nine want to Nelson, but the majority of

i • ■' them stayed at"Akaroa. They were a peaceable people, and there was never any trouble with them." Continuing his reminiscences, the, old man said what few Maoris there were on Banks Penir?ula were always very friendly to the whites. They always got blankets" arid tobacco in exchange tor. eels and flounders, which was. about all .they had to exchange, with the exception of Maori potatoes, which they grew plentifully in their cleared gardens. The- whaling stations were primitive enough, and supplies were not easy to obtain. Mr Ryan only whaled one season at Oashore, partly because they ran out. of casks and partly because at the end of the season news came down that the owners, had failed. Everyone grabbed what he could get, and Mr Ryan lost about £230. He had married meanwhile, and shortly' after went to live at Port Levy. He did some coopering for. the whalers, who came in wanting casks made up. The whalers he describas as a wild, rough crowd, whose deeds often would riot bear chronicling. Many of them deserted, from their ships and lived among the Maoris. Mr Hay and Mr Sinclair were the first settlers. .They settled at Pigeon Bay, and a little later 'on tfie" two Messrs Deans came aud settled at Riccarton. , Mr Wm. De-vis came first .in the brig Rika, ceion-»ing to the famous Jolinnie Jones, ut -Aluch Mr.Biuce. who afterwards kept the Akar-ia Hotel, was captain. ■ „ ,

'.'Mr Deans came ashore and saw mc," continued the oud man, "and asked to be taken round ,and.up the Avon, so that he could see the place. We went up in a>" boat to where the Market Place is now. It was afterwards" called the Bricks, because bricks were sent from WeßLogton and stored there for the cltunneys when the Deans' built their houses. There was a .blind creek a little .further up, and we got but there. The place was all mud anaswanxp and flax and toi toi. .-, We stood up to bur knees in mud, and weeds. We walked a bit, and came to another creek, -which was too muddy, to' .cross, so Mr Deans got frightened and instead of .going further climbed up on my back and' had a long-look round 'That's my shop,"-, he said when he got down, pointing over in" 1 the direction of the bush. Mr John Deans had Sydney to buy cattle and sheep to ship over. They threw up their ."and in Nelson and Petone when they decided to come-here. Some months afterwards they came down and signalled at Port Levy Heads. I was sawing timber at the time. They landed a lot of cattle and horses. One beautiful mare slipped from the slings going over the side, and broke ber leg. Mr Deans had given lOOgs fcr her in, Sydney. We put up sheds for the horses, and Mr Wm. Deans brought men from Wellington to saw the timber' for their house. Mr Gebbie and Mr Maneon came with the Deans's, and three or.four years after started for themselves at Gebbie's and Manson's Flats. Two men came from Sydney, and settled in Riccarton in 1840, but they stayed only twelve months, and then threw it up, leaving their belongings and their bullocks to-go wild. It took the French settlers some time before they got really established; they could not get on with the Maoris. The natives did not like them. They said the Frenchmen were too tyrannical." Reverting once more to his own history, the old man remarked that he had left Port Levy,after being there a short while, arid gone to Motonau on his own account.. He started a fishery, there, but caught only one whale, and went, back again to Port Levy, where lie worked at sawing timber for several years. He made the first dairy implements that were used on the Peninsula for Mr Hay.

In the latter end of 1840 Mr Ryan -remembers the first visit of the Roman Catholic Bishop (Dr. Pompellier), wlw> came down from the Bay of Islands. The object of his visit was chiefly to sse if stations could be formed and missions started amongst- the Maoris. He stayed six weeks, and married three couple- and christened a great many .Maori and half-caste, children and adults. He was highly pleased with" this Maoris on the Peninsula as ccmpared with the North Island natives. A great .many, of the women had taken up with white men, run-away sailors, etc. Shortly after regular visits from priests were arranged. The first to come was-Father de Compte, the man who gave the -Maoris' the first flourmill that was erected in the North Island. ' No English -Missionaries came until after 1850, and then there wa- hardly a week butrcieTgy- of .one derioriiination or another came wanting money' for schools and churches, and such like. <, '.'I. did not stay all the while at'Pp-*' Levy," concluded the old pioneer. "I made', several trips, two to America, After the 'steamers got coming about the whalers left the coast, and .the fisheries died away. I don't suppose those times will ever be seen again." "