THE WANDERER'S GUN.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE WANDERER'S GUN.

STORY OF BEN BOYD'S "LONG TOM." THE FIGHT AT GUADALCANAL, ISLAND. (By J.C.) The historical Waterloo gun presented to the city by the relatives of the late Mr. Samuel Browning now at the flagstaff foot In Albert Park has an interesting history. Much of the narrative as I shall give it here I heard from John Webstar himself in 1898 at Hokianga..

That twelve-pounder was one of the field guns captured from the French at the battle of Waterloo. Some time in the forties of last century it was presented by the British War Office to a Mr. Benjamin Boyd, a well-off Australian squatter who was well-connected in the Old Country and had friends in high places. He was in England fitting out a schooner yacht he had bought for cruising in the Pacific. This vessel, the Wanderer, was a beautiful topsail schooner of 240 tons, and was registered in the Royal Yacht Squadron. Boyd took the schooner out to Australia and cruised among the Pacific Islands, and in the early part of 1851 he was at San Francisco. There he met John Webster, from New Zealand, who had been attracted by the wonderful discoveries of gold in California, and he ;>nd Webster became great friends. Mr. Webster had spent some adventurous years in the Hokianga and Bay of Islands districts; he and F. E. 'Maning (afterwards the celebrated judge) had served together in Tamati Waka's force fighting for the British against Hone Heke (1845).

The Wanderer's Last Cruise. Boyd invited Webster to accompany him on a long South Sea cruise. The Wanderer went to Honolulu, and there Boyd and Webster met King Kamehanieha, the monarch of the Sandwich Islands, as Hawaii was generally called then. There was talk of an ambitious Confederation scheme in the South Seas, with Kamehameba as a kind of overlord, and it was partly with this end in view that the Wanderer's owner took his schooner to the Western Pacific to explore the possibilities of the Solomon Islands. On October 15 the Wanderer was lying at anchor in a quiet bay of Guadalcanar, one of the large mountainous islands of the Solomon Group. Mr. Webster had already been on shore spying out the nature of the country, and returned unmolested by the natives. Mr. Bond landed in the morning to enjoy some shooting; he was accompanied by his native boy. He intended going up a little wooded valley round a point from the schooner's anchorage- Soon after he disappeared from view those on board the schooner heard two shots, fired at short intervals. They took little notice of them, thinking that the owner was shooting pigeons. Attacked by Savages. Things were very quiet for some time after that, and Webster was wondering how his friend was faring in his shooting expedition, when suddenly & whole flotilla of native canoes shot round the point and made for the schooner, the crews yelling their war cries as they plied their paddles desperately. The Wanderer's crew were taken by surprise. It was touch-and-go for us that morning," said John Webster, telling the story. "Our deck guns were not loaded, and we had barely time to pick up our rifles and muskets before the natives were on us. Our crew" were mostly Kanakas; they used tomahawks pikes and anything they could snatch up. |

Solomon savages attacked the •cnooner on both sides and many of them got up on deck. There was a hand-to-hand fight for some fierc moments, and several natives were killed on the deck. The attackers were driven back into tfleTr canoes, and then the schooner's artillery was brought to bear on them. The guns were quickly loaded, and several of the canoes were shattered with grape shot and some of the warriors killed. John Webster was one of those who manned the 12-pounder on the quarter-deck, the most useful jrun of them all. The natives, baulked of their expected loot and "long-pig," bolted on shore and flew to the bush. The Wanderer continued the cannonade, and poured solid shot and grape into the villages on shore. Then a strong party, headed by Mr. Webster, Tanded and burned the village, and made a search for Mr. Boyd. The search for Mr. Boyd was unsuccessful. Nothing of him but the sword belt he wore was e.er found. Part of the skull of the native boy who was with him was picked up. Both without a doubt were eaten by the savages. The two shots heard by the schooner must have been fired by him in self-defence when he was ambushed by the native* lying in wait for him round the point. So tragically ended Ben Boyd's Sor*fc Sea enterprise. The Wanderer sailed away from the bay of savages—it is marked now on the charts as Wanderer Bay—and steered a course for Australia, but was wrecked in a gale near Port Macquarie. At the sale of the wreck the 12-pounder gun v.hicb had done such good service in the Guadalconar battle was bought by Mr. Samuel Browning who afterwards settled in Auckland. For a time it was lent to one of the ships carrying gold from Australia to England, for protection against possible enemies on the high seas. Later on it was presented to the city of Auckland by the relatives of the deceased owner, and it was placed in the Albert Park alongide the two Russian guns captured at Sebastopol which were presented to New Zealand by the British Government.

John Webster's Return. John Webster during the last cruise of the Wanderer made many watercolour sketches, and this collection greatly interested Queen Victoria when he had the honour of showing them to her and describing the Solomons tragedy, a year or so after the loss of the schooner. Mr. Webster then returned to New Zealand and settled in Kohukohu, Hokianga, and later at Opononi, where in his pretty waterside home he had a great collection of relics •nd art treasures. He wrote a little book descriptive of the Wanderers Cruise and illustrated it with his own drawings. That old gun therefore was • story of tragedy and valour, a story that begins with Napoleon's last battle and ends in a strangely different scene, beating off a horde of savages in the canniSouth Seas.