THE CAMPBELL ISLAND PRINCESS

Evening Star, Issue 19550, 7 May 1927, Page 14

THE CAMPBELL ISLAND PRINCESS

[Written by Canon Nevii.i-, for the * Evening Star.’]

A good deal has been written on this subject, some true, some decidedly the reverse, and it is just as well for history that the facts, as far as they are known, should be restated. Campbell Island is the possessor of of this romantic story. There is said to lie the grave of a daughter of <( Bonnie Prince Charlie.” Fifty years ago there were discovered on the island several graves, one that of a Frenchwoman it was said. It was stated that she was the daughter of Peg Walkinshaw and Prince Charles. Peg Walkinshaw attracted the Prince’s attention during the festivities at Holyrood in 1745, and after that famous'but illfated Prince had been driven from Scotland Peg Walkinshaw followed him to France. Their attachment to each other must have been very great, causing as it did almost a breach between the Prince and his party, they alleging that she was a spy in ihe pay of the British Government^ Charles Edward disbelieved all these canards, and death alone separated the lovers, a daughter being left behind to fill the mother’s place. _ The Jacobite Party, jealous and suspicious, formed a plot to got rid of the girl. The next f actor to enter is a sailor named Stewart, the reputed discoverer of Stewart Island. Acting in the party’s interests, Stewart carried off the girl, took her on board his own vessel, and sot sail for a buccaneering cruise in the South Seas. He lost his ship, took up his quarters in New Zealand, and became noted as a discoverer. His next act was to get rid of 'his prisoner, whom he handed over to another man of his own stamp, who took her away to Campbell Island, where she died and was buried.

As to Dugald Stewart, this is the real story: 135 years ago and more a whaleship named Perseverance, belonging to Robert Campbell and Co., of Sydney, afterwards of New Zealand, discovered the Campbell Islands. They were taken possession of by them, a shore station with try works being erected in what , is now Perseverance Harbor. The. whaleship paid repeated visits to the harbor, and on one of these occasions she brought with her a woman named Helen Parr, an absconder from the then penal settlement at Sydney Cove. Along with Haselburgh, the skipper of the whaler, whose’ name is also preserved in tho islands, Parr met with a boat accident, in which Hasolburgh was drowned and his body never recovered. The woman was rescued and brought on shore, but So completely exhausted that she died in the hands of her rescuers. Sydney records describe her as a woman of Irish descent and middle-aged. In later years, during the French scare (1839-40), a French corvette visited the island. During her stay a midshipman, described ns a youth of gentle birth, met his death. _ He was buried in the immediate vicinity of the other .grave. The spot was marked by an ornamental cross erected inside an iron bar railing. This has been_ repeatedly cleared up and and repaired, the late Captain, John Fairchild having charged himself with these duties. In time these two adjacent tombs got mixed, and the one periodically repaired, being the more conspicuous, came to be called “ the grave of the Frenchwoman,” The other, completely neglepted, was lost sight of. It should be known that it contains two grave plots, not one. . „ ~ Dr Thomson, in his ‘Story of Southern New Zealand,’ has picked up his information chiefly from Sydney Cove sealers and others. A Pakcha Maori named Dngald Stewart is mentioned, who professed to be a noted Scottish Jacobite, and, being largely embarked in the smuggling trade of the day, his story was that, amongst other contraband, ho smuggled Princes Charles Edward into England on the occasion of his last visit. He hinted mysteriously about certain of the Prince’s liaisons and the' difficulty of getting tnem hushed up. So the story of the Frenchwoman’s grave, coupled with the talk of the noted Jacobite, made good raw “material for a fine romance which got into a publication called ‘ New Zealand Lone Lands,’ find thence found its way into the ‘Pall Mall Gazette, where the tale found acceptance as “gospel truth ”