FRIEND OF “R.L.S.”

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 154, 27 March 1937, Page II (Supplement)

FRIEND OF “R.L.S.”

Ben Hird’s Nephew Tells of Islands Trader “Ben Hird—rny uncle—was a strapping big man with a passion for the sea and a good story; as jovial ,as any other trader of his time; in fact, he was exactly the character Robert Louis Stevenson says he was,” Mr. Benjamin Hird, Gisborne, told “The Dominion” on Tuesday. Though but a boy at the time, he can remember perfectly when his uncle visited New Zealand and he is familiar with the facts of the friendship between the famous author aud the seaman.

It was purely by a chance conversation that he was informed of the discovery of one of Stevenson’s letters, which was published in “The Dominion” on Tuesday, and which was written to his uncle; and it w.as only by chance that he decided to spend part of his holiday in Wellington. “I have occasionally been mistaken for the original Ben Hird,” lie said. “Yes, he was a character,” he continued. “He was born in Aberdeen about 1850 and was the youngest of four sons. They’re all dead now. He ran away to sea and linked up with a Sydney firm of islajid traders, Henderson, McFarlane and Company, who. I think, are established in Auckland to-day. He was super-cargo, or purser, on the schooner —I can’t remember its mime—and bartered all sorts of goods with the Islanders in exchange for copra and other products. He left off trading for a while to visit New Zealand. Of his .three brothers, two, James and Alexander, settled in Gisborne, and they saw him three times. I think.

“I can remember some of the things lit used to talk about. He said he visited many of the islands in tlie Pacific, .and was the first white man ever to reach some of them. I can tell you this, too. Captain John Benton —be is now living in Auckland—sailed with Beu Hird to the islands and traded. He was mate on tlie schooner, and when he gave up that life he became harbourmaster lit Gisborne. It is funny that I should be something of the sort, too, isn’t it? I'm wharfinger there now. "Here’s another thing: Ben Hird's widow is alive and is living at Gisborne. She married again ami is now Mrs. Siever. There was one daughter of the first marriage and she is married now and is Mrs. May Tidsell, Palmerston North. There are not many of us Hirds left now. My brother James is in Napier, ami he lias named his son .after me. He is the lust of the line at present.

“By the way, I nearly forgot. Alexander was one of the earliest Gisborne settlers. He was there long before that big massacre of To Kooti’s. He had a cordial factory there, but this passed into other hands years ago. I’ve been in Gisborne a long time, too —SS years. I went on the other eoast a bit as well, and I was sailing in Cook Strait when the City of Auckland was wrecked at Otaki.”