Bully would be flattered

Press, 10 December 1982, Page 18

Bully would be flattered

There was a time when the name of Bully Hayes was feared throughout the Pacific — from America to China, from the Hawaiian to our own islands. Some say they murdered Bully and dumped his body overboard off the Lotus in 1877, en route to Fiji from San Francisco. Many believe William Henry Hayes got all he deserved on that, his last Pacific voyage. He was born in America about 1829, a close relation of Rutherford Hayes, the nineteenth President of the United States. But Bully was not interested in politics; he pursued a career in commerce — of a kind. As a young man he lost an ear in a brawl after allegedly cheating at cards. His irate opponent reputedly sliced off the ear with a razor-sharp Bowie knife and Hayes was lucky to escape with his life. He subsequently grew his hair long to hide this scar. In the 1850-60-70 s he became notorious throughout the Pacific as a “blackbirder,” or slaver, often posing as a missionary to lure islanders aboard his ships, usually stolen and with a cut-throat crew. The unfortunate natives were imprisoned below decks and transported to distant climes where Bully sold them to plantation owners in need of cheap labour. Bully reached New Zealand in 1862 in company with a family named Buckingham. Hayes fancied the Buckinghams’ daughter, Rona. They made straight for the latest goldfield, Fox’s (now Arrowtown), where the first successful prospectors took some 2001 b of gold from the Arrow River gorge in a few weeks. The Buckinghams also

went into gold mining — the easy way. They set up a bar where Rona's shapely body and scintillating voice drew droves of thirsty miners who were relieved of their gold. Bully set up “The Prince of Wales Hotel and Theatre" opposite the Buckinghams' bar and eventually wooed and wed Rona. Mrs Hayes now took to singing in her husband’s hotel and the Buckinghams lost all' their customers — much to Bully's delight. However, the Buckinghams offered Bully's barber five pounds — a good sum in those days — to “accidentally” scissor off all the long hair covering their rival’s missing ear and reveal the ignominious scar. Bully had a reputation as a real macho man with, as one writer describes it, “a punch like a kick from a New Orleans mule.” He probably used that punch on the offending barber, but it was too late. The missing ear was revealed, the story of how he lost it spread, and the entire gold field echoed with laughter over how big, tough Bully Hayes had been “trimmed.” To keep the laughter going the Buckinghams staged a play in their hotel called “The Barberous Barber” and The Prince of Wales Hotel underwent a dramatic and financially disastrous loss of trade. Bully was, quite literally, laughed out of town. Shortly after this he lost his wife Rona and their infant daughter in a shipwreck. This tragedy did not improve Bully’s character. In 1865, a South Island newspaper reported he had stolen a ship and abducted a teen-age girl from Akaroa.

She was later found, naked, in a dinghy in Tory Channel where Hayes abandoned her before sailing away to continue his blackbirding enterprise in the Pacific. He met his end at the hands of the cook on Lotus, in March, 1877. After being bullied and assaulted by

Hayes, the cook got a pistol and, during a stormy night, crept up on his tormentor and shot him dead just as the vessel heeled over. He dumped Hayes’s body into the ocean' whose island inhabitants he had terrorised for several decades. In subsequent years Bully Hayes was immortalised in a

number of books and "penny dreadfuls,” tales of his evildoing losing nothing in the retelling. Bully, always proud of his macho image, would have enjoyed these yards. And he would certainly have been flattered that his exploits have inspired the making of a multimillion dollaf movie.

The $lO million film “Savage Islands,” being filmed in Northland and Rotorua, is an action drama based on the exploits of a man who was once laughed out of Arrowtown. BRIAN MACKRELL recalls.