NEW ZEALAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 88, 15 April 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

NEW ZEALAND ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

i OEFORE looking more closely ** at the incidents of 1840 it ' seems necessary to review briefly the various tendencies before that date, which produced that climax • of activity, official and unofficial, ', which put New Zealand on the map of the British Empire over- [ seas. The history of British New i Zealand does not begin in 1840, • with the arrival of Captain Hobson, as Consul and LieutenantGovernor, armed with instructions to establish British Sovereignty on the basis of the 1 free and intelligent consent of the natives. A "de facto" colony had already sprung up, irregularly and unlawfully; European settlers were scattered here, there and everywhere, from Whangaroa, the Bay of Islands and Hokianga in the north, to the shores of Foveaux Strait and Stewart Island in the south. "And such specimens of settlers," says one lady visitor in her 1840 journal, "many degrees below those' of New South Wales in apparent respectability. Truly the early settlers in a new colony do become most extraordinary beings, somewhat, I imagine, of the Kentucky style, "half horse, half alligator, with a touch of the earthquake.'" It is, interesting to note that the particular batch of settlers to whom the lady thus refers included Dr. J. Logan Campbell and his partner, William Brown. For ten years or more before Hobson was sent out, this problem of unauthorised settlements in New Zealand had been worrying the Colonial Office. Edward Gibbon Wakefield had referred to the process in his evidence before the Select Committee of 1836: "We are, I think, going to colonise New Zealand, though we are doing it in a most slovenly and scrambling and disgraceful manner." Lord Glenelg and his philanthropic friends might denounce colonisation in countries like New Zealand on the ground that European settlement invariably led to the exploitation and eventual extermination of the aborigines, but the situation had already passed the point where such reflections were of any use. The clear thinking of James Stephen, Permanent Under-Secretary for the Colonies, cut through these sentimental mopings. In January, 1839, he wrote that there was no longer any question of whether or not New Zealand should colonised; a colony of upwards of 2000 British subjects was in fact already established there, and was daily increasing by recruits from England and Australia. "They are for the most part people of disorderly habits and profligate character, the scourge of the aborigines, whom, if unchecked, they will ere long exterminate. The only question, therefore, is between acquiescence in a

By Professor James Rutherford

The purpose of this series of articles b.v the Professor *of History at the Auckland University College is to recall the events of a hundred years ago which led to the establishment of the Colony of Xew Zealand, and in particular, by tracing some of the leading incidents of the year IS4O itself, to illustrate the problems and conditions of life which the early pioneers had to face. In the hope that the human side of the story may be fully brought out, tfie articles will be based as closely as possible on the diaries, journals and letters of those who participated in the events. Xo attempt is being made to write a history of Xew Zealand— only a few leading events will be selected as typical. lawless colonisation and the establishment of a Colony under the authority of law." Ther& was, as a matter of fact, another question, and a big one—namely, whether, in addition to establishing a colonial Government in New Zealand to control existing settlements, the Government could sanction Wakefield's scheme for further large-scale systematic emigration thither. Of this, more will be said in a later article. Meanwhile, what of the "colony" of New Zealand before 1839? For present purposes, the briefest of descriptions must suffice. Seals, Then Whales Sealing was the first main attraction. Temporary shore parties are heard of as early as 1792—some of them not so temporary as they could have desired, for we read of sealing gangs being marooned for as long as seven years, and ekeing out a pathetic existence on seal meat and seagulls' eggs. Systematic slaughter of young seals soon killed th»

prospects of this trade. By the late lS2o's sealskins were a secondary con* sideration to whale oil, whalebone, flax and timber. The scale on which 'whaling operations were conducted after 1828 is not as a rule fully appreciated. For tea or twelve years, that is until the whales began to react as the seals had done, profits were high enough to assure steady expansion of the trade. Five pioneer vessels in IS3O procured «»rgoes of oil and bone worth £20,000 at Sydney. The shore stations, which were the bases of the bay whaling operations, were* often large establishments; Busn and Company's Preservation Inlet (Ut'on, under Peter Williams, had in j*3(' a permanent gang of fifty or sixty nen, who were employed during the off-at a. on in catching seals and sawing tiiater. John Guard's station at Te Awaiti in Tory Channel, the oldest of them all, dating from about 1827, and still in existence, also had a large permanent population. By 1839, there were not less than thirty such whaling 'stations up and down the New Zealand coast, mainly at Foveaux Strait, Otago, Banks Peninsula, Cloudy Bay, Cook Strait and Kapiti, and one or two near East Capo and in the Bay of Plenty. At a rough t estimate, they might account for anything between 500 and 800 settlers. The ' value of the trade is indicated bv the 1 fact that in 183 C fourteen American i whalers alone obtained close on a mil- . lion dollars' worth oi oil and bone, and , there were Xew South Wales. English and French whalers in the field, too. Xaturally, keen competition and the ; absence of regulation fostered disputes . and disorders. Whales were stolen, boats ; seized, whole crews decoyed away by the less scrupulous captains; the 'drunkenness and profanity of English shore parties shocked the Puritan conscience .of Xew England captains, but did hot induce them to abandon so profitable a ; commerce; native troubles caused peren- | nial alarm, often well justified. The whole position provided strong grounds ; for the persistent petitions of London I merchants, who urged the Government ! to take effective steps to protect the , vested interests of so important a trade. ► (To be continued.)