JUST A CENTURY AGO

Evening Star, Issue 23651, 10 August 1940, Page 18

JUST A CENTURY AGO

THE FRENCH AT AKAROA EXERCISE OF BRITISH SOVEREIGNTY • Cue hundred years ago, on 11th August 1840, Captain Stanley landed at Akaroa and carried out the first exercise of British sovereignty in the South Island, asserting Britain’s effective occupation of territory already proclaimed British. It is well known today that there was no dramatic race to Akaroa between Stanley and the I’ rencli commander of the warship sent to protect the French colonists on their way to Akaroa. But it is perhaps not so well known that France took a very practical interest in the colony at Akaroa for some years after the territory had been in practice acknowledged as British.

There had been French contacts with Akaroa earlier in 1840 than the arrival of the French colonists in August. French whalers had called, and Dumont d’Urville, the great French explorer, returning from a long voyage to the southern polar regions, met one of these at anchor there in April. D’Urville himself narrowly escaped shipwreck at the Akaroa Heads. The French colonists arrived at Pigeon Bay on August 9, where the whaling captain, Langtois, set about completing the payment to the Maoris for the 30,000 acres he had bought in 1838. The emigrants did not land at their real destination until August 19.

A TACTFUL COMMANDER. In an cm harassing situation Captain Lavaud, commander of the French warship Aube, behaved with great tact. He was not in any way connected with the Nanto-Bordclaise Company, which had sent out the emigrants, but he represented the' French Government. The French Government was doubly concerned in Akaroa, both on account of the sovereignty it had wished to assume, • though only over the limited area of the peninsula, and because it had largely financed the company in sending out the colonists. The real importance of Akaroa to France—or rather its intended , importance—was economic.

In 1840 the whaling trade had reached its zenith in the South Seas. French ships had long hunted, as did numbers of British and Americans, the ocean-going sperm whale. This creature had, however, become scarce, and whalers were more and more turning to the right nr black whale, a different species,, which haunted the New Zealand coasts to calve. These were an easy prey to whalers operating from the shore without large ships. France desired to participate in this trade. At the same time it was useful to ‘have a base somewhere in the Pacific where the French sperm whalers could call for fresh _ provisions and trade. There was a hint, too, that France might have developed Akaroa as a convict settlement. A BAD INVESTMENT. Akaroa was a bad investment lor France. The Comte de Paris, which had brought out the handful of French colonists, was to catch whales with Akaroa as a base. It had only one good season, the first, for the right whales soon succumbed to the increased number of whalers in the early ’forties, and became practically extinct. The colonists had been expected to develop a small horticultural settlement, for they were gardeners rather than farmers. They were helped out by the fact that the French Governijnent kept a warship stationed at Akaroa for 1- their protection until late in the The crews of these ships carried out reading and building operations, and the .colonists could sell their' meagre produce to the sailors. In 1840 Bishop Pompallier, the Catholic Bishop of Oceania, and a Frenchman, paid the little settlement a visit, and Lavaud obligingly got his sailors to sheathe the hull of the Catholic mission schooner with copper. In 1843 Lavaud returned to France, but a new French warship replaced his vessel on the station, under the command of Captain Berard, a man of some scientific attainments. In 1844 France recognised New Zealand as a British possession, ending 1 a rather equivocal attitude. The French warships, incidentally, gave _ real and needed protection to English as well as French, settlers.

It was on board Berard’s ship, the Rhin, that Charles Meryon sailed as a midshipman. He was afterwards to achieve fame as an etcher, returning to his Akaroa sketches for a few of his subjects. The Frenchmen who came to New Zealand, both those associated with Akaroa and the long line of distinguished navigators who had made earlier visits, were nearly all men of distinction and considerable intellectual attainments, a fact that gives an added value to their work for New Zealand.