Death of the settlers

Press, 19 November 1977, Page 15

Death of the settlers

One could not say that there was any danger, or indeed drama, in the Canterbury Association’s organised settlement of our province. Under the Wakefield plan the association planned to transplant a stratified crosssection of British society, and well-educated young men of good family were wanted to act as leaders to a main body of skilled artisans and agricultural labourers travelling as assisted emigrants, after first passing the test of approval by their vicars. Among those attracted to the new Church of England settlement, and travelling as cabin-passengers in the Charlotte Jane, were the three elder sons of the Anglo-Irish vicar of Killinchy, County Down, the Hon. and Rev. Henry Ward. Encouraged by his father to help establish a Church of England community overseas, Edward Robert Ward, aged 25, took with him his brothers Henry aged 19. Hamilton, aged 16, and a number of farm labourers from the district. As befitted the status of eldest son, Edward had been educated as a gentleman of good family, at the King’s School, Castletown, Isle of Man. and afterwards at Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his degree in law. From a typically large portrait commissioned in 1849, when Edward was 24 and already preparing to cross the world to the Antipodes, he appears as a handsome and amiable young man, with ruddy

cheeks, chestnut hair, and bright blue eyes. Thanks to the continued interest of the Irish relatives, notably Miss Charlotte Ward, of Newcastle, County Down, grand-niece of the Hon. Henry Ward, this fine portrait was recently presented to the museum, where it joins the three original diary journals presented by the Canterbury Pilgrims’ Association in 1949, and published by the Pegasus Press in 1951, on the anm-

versary of the tragic death of the two elder Ward brothers, as “The Journal of Edward Ward.” His fellow-countryman. John Robert Godley, of Killegar, County Leitrim, naturally liked young Ward. Before sailing with the first party of the Canterbury Pilgrims on September 7, 1850, he was appointed a member of the important Committee of the Society of Canterbury Colonists, which in New Zealand became the Society of Land Purchasers. Appointed a justice of the peace within two months, and the personal friend of the Charlotte Jane notables who were to become so influential in the new settlement, Edward Ward seemed destined for a promising career. For their interim house in Lyttelton the Ward brothers excavated the

foundations, piled up the sods as walls, reinforced with a tarpaulin, and built a timber-framed roof. All this time they had in mind their permanent house of which they had constructed a model in the Charlotte Jane. Considering the possibility of Christchurch and the Plains, Edward bought a town section and a block of 100 acres near Rangiora. Having painful experience of the difficulties

of getting goods and furnishings over the Port Hills or the Sumner bar, Edward made a perhaps impatient decision to acquire Quail Island as a dairy farm and build there “in case the Bridle Path section was taken before us.” First they built a yawl, the Lass of Erin, sufficiently advanced on St Patrick’s day (March 17, 1851) to make the first crossing with oars to deliver building materials. Later, the working bullock Big Tom was able to drag in heavy timbers during low-tide crossings. By May the House was finished, and set in its yard of palings, an attractive weatherboard cottage, with shingle roof, plastered rooms, and chimneys of Quail Island sandstone. Edward Ward’s diary for June 11 records a first encounter with Canterbury’s winter weather,

“Last night was a hideous night. A dreadful storm blew — rain, hail, and sleet against the house, and thunder added to the horror of it. A storm sounds so loud against this hollow, wooden case, as if it were a drum.” Saturday, June 14, records that the boat still needed caulking and would be unable to carry them to church on Sunday. The last entry is for Sunday, June 22. “Boat (went over to Lyttelton) early with all the male population of the Island. Mr Jacobs preached — poor sermon.” On the next day, Monday. June 23, 1851. Edward and Henry took the boat over to Governor’s Bay to load firewood and failed to return. On the Tuesday a search party found the yawl floating, keel up, and it concluded that the load had capsized her. Edward and Henry were described as good boatmen and strong swimmers. Only one body was recovered, that of Edward, on Sunday, June 29. Charlotte Godley wrote the epitaph: “Poor Mr Ward will be terribly missed both here and at home. He was a good man of business, ven' sensible and very much liked by everyone. He used to sing with the Glee Club and Church Practisings. dance with the young ladies, talk sensibly and laugh and smoke with the gentlemen, work with his labourers and was always good natured and full of spirits.”

Contributed by ROGER DUFF on behalf of the Canterbury Museum.