100 YEARS OLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 81, 6 April 1938, Page 13

100 YEARS OLD.

PAST RELIVED.

MAORI WAR INCIDENT.

CAPTAIN CORBETT-SCOTT,

A party of men are cooking food in front of the stockade gates . . . suddenly a shot rings out . . . brownskinned figures leap from the cover of the bush not far away and charge for the stockade. ... A firm voice calls out loudly above the excitement, "Fix bayonets! Xo volleys to be fired yet. Xo vollevs to be firod ... '."

The scone has changed now, and the place whore the incident took place today is green and tortile and knows nothing but peace. Tot in the memory of one man in Auckland tlhe incident lives.

The man is Captain J. S. CorbettScott, a resident of Kpsom for over thirty years, wlio celebrates his 100 th birthday on April 10.

Here is the story of that morning in ISii.S. The incident happened during the Maori Wars in South Auckland. Members of the Scott family were anion" the earliest to come to Pukekohe East from Scotland and Cornwall. Joseph (orbett-Seott, who is so soon to be 100 years old, was 21 years old. When the war came every youth who could handle a rifle joined a company of the Forest Hitle Volunteers, while the families were sent by Lieutenant A. H. Lusk (afterwards Major) to places of greater safety. The Stockade Near the Church. A stockade was built on an eminence about two miles oast of the railway station, and work on it had not boon finished when the Maoris attacked. The Maoris charged down on the log fence, accompanied, as Captain Corbott -Scott has often recalled, by a woman, who. in the heat of the battle, raised a piercing shout of encouragement.

Sergeant Terry, the only man with military training among the defenders, had been placed in command of the stockade. He gave the order to tix bayonets, and said that on no account must a volley be fired in case, while the defenders were reloading, the Maoris should charge into the stockade.

Eor several hours the Maoris kept up a heavy tire from the cover of the bush and from the tree tops. The tenseness of the scene is well described by the old man, who to-day lives the scene in memory. It was not easy for youth to keep a stern control, to save every shot and. above all. to keep calm. To him it seemed (it the time that there must have been from 300 to 400 Maoris attacking, but those attackers who survived stated subsequently that their greatest number was never more than 200.

Only a Five foot Fence. The fact that the stockade was not I'mMicd did not make the defenders' la~k

ea-ier. Not more than oft high, it gave p..or cover. Still, there was nowhere else to go, so the stockade had to be held.

After the first assault the Maoris made one important capture important, that was. to them. It was the meat and potatoes abandoned at the gates when the attack began. Taking the food cost the Maoris several dead and injured, but they adjourned the attack and went and feasted in the gully below.

Then the attack was intensified again, and with increasing heat of the day, the ever-growing cloud of smoke, and the thirst, the defenders' lot became more and more unpleasant. Captain Corl>ett-Scott recalled this after the light was over. While it was on no one had time to think. Captain CorbettScott and another youth, dames Easton. were entrusted with the defence of the angle holding the narrow gateway against the main concentration of attackers. Every shot had to tell. As many a Maori fell he was dragged into the bush by means of supplejack fastened round the ankle.

Only a Round Left! Up to this time thought of rescue, or what would happen if no rescue came. or if the Maoris could not be repulsed, did not seem to have been prominent. Captain Corbett-Scott recalled; but things were getting desperate. Some defenders had only a single round of ammunition remaining.

It is not difficult to picture their relief when about 1 p.m. they saw a rescue party arrive. Lieutenant Grierson and :!2 men of the 70th Regiment had come from Ramaraina. Captain Moir and three wagons of ammunition came about 3 o'clock, and when an hour later the sound of bugles was heard in the bush the parched and weary garrison sent up a cheer.

A company of 150 soldiers of the 18th Royal Irish and the fi.'ith charged across the clearing led by Captain Inman and Captain Saltmarche. and after an hour of fighting succeeded in driving off the Maoris. Despite the arrival of the earlier relief, the natives were within 40 yards of the stockade. The British suffered three killed or mortally wounded in the final charge, but not a man inside the stockade was struck by a bullet.

That was not the only incident in the wars in which Captain C'orbettScott participated. On the day preceding the attack he had a dangerous adventure with three other young men. A fortnight earlier hie, father had been mortally wounded by the Maoris on his farm, and the four young men went to see how the stock was faring. They fell in with a party of warriors. In the skirmish Joseph Scott and a companion. Elijah Roose, were cut off in t!« iuish. the other two reaching the stocka<Tr. Fn i the melee young Scott's eyebrow was grazed by a bullet. The Maoris surrounded the bush and as night fell lit large tires of wood and fern so that the young men could not escape in the dark. Happily, however, it rained. The lire.* I were put out and the two young men reached the stockade and safety. J