TROUBLED TRIP

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20067, 13 October 1939, Page 4

TROUBLED TRIP

HUNDRED YEARS AGO THE BENGAL MERCHANT SCOTTISH SETTLERS PASSENGER’S COMPLAINTS Some of us remember that the Bengal Merchant, one of the first five ships to carry emigrants to the New Zealand Company settlement at Port Nicholson, sailed from the Clyde and carried entirely Scottish settlers. But it is generally overlooked that there was a strong interest in the settlement of New Zealand in the Scotland of 100 years ago, several years before the colonisation of Otago. There was actually an attempt to found with Scottish capital and people a rival to the New Zealand Company.

A Scots Company

A certain Patrick Matthew took a leading part in the attempt to found a Scots New Zealand Company. In contrast to the well-defined class-divisions upheld by Wakefield’s New Zealand Company, Matthew’s company was democratic and co-operative. The emigrants were to buy £SO shares to cover their passages, food for a year and land in New Zealand.

The Scots company came to nothing, though the New Zealand, Waitemata and Manakou Company inherited some of its aspirations. This company late in 1840 exported a few families from Greenock to the neighbourhood of Auckland and then, after laying out the town of Cornwallis, left them more, or less to their own devices. Governor Fitzroy came to their rescue and gave them Government land to the extent of a quarter of their claims on their elusive company. The company itself was awarded some 1900 acres, but seems to have been too lazy ever to have taken possession of them.

It . was unfortunate that failure should have overtaken an enterprise inspired, by the idealism of Patrick Matthew. He was a strenuous advocate of working-class aspirations.

The Bengal Merchant Farewellcd The New Zealand Company, despite the competition of native Scots companies, succeeded in filling the Bengal Merchant with 150 emigrants. There were only 19 of these in the cabin, including tlie Rev. John Macfarlane, a minister of the Church of Scotland who had undertaken a special three years’ charge at Port Nicholson. Mr. Macfarlane had been a minister in Paisley, and another member of the Paisley Presbytery, a Macfarlan without an “e,” preached a sermon farewelling the party. Indeed they were well and truly farewelled, as a meeting was held in the Glasgow Trades Hall, where local notables called down blessings on the enterprise. The ship had been fitted out at Gravesend, then had gone north to pick up its passengers. It sailed from the Clyde on October 31, 1839.

Squabbling On the Water

Alexander Marjoribanks, a cabin passenger, has left us a lively account of the voyage, but he did not tell the whole story. He remarked that there occurred during the voyage one death, one birth, one baptism, and one marriage, omitting to state that the marriage was his own.

Despite the ministrations of the Rev. John Macfarlane, some very unChristian quarrelling broke out among the cabin passengers and their wives. The two doctors employed by the company did not agree, and the captain sided first with one and then the other.

The steerage passengers had the most substantial cause for complaint, since late in the voyage it came out that they had never received the full rations allotted to them. The Bengal Merchant sighted New Zealand on February 10, 1840, but it was another 10 days before it entered Fort Nicholson. Scots Settlers at Port Nicholson For a considerable time the Church of Scotland’s minister was the only ordained clergyman at Port Nicholson, and he was in great request to marry, to baptise and to bury Protestants of every shade of doctrine. The Rev. John Macfarlane found a similar state of affairs when he visited Nelson, He estimated that there were 600 people of the Presbyterian faith in Port Nicholson in 1841, about one-quarter of the population at that time. Several prominent Presbyterians who went to Port Nicholson (first—Hay, Sinclair and Deans—had’taken their families south to begin the settlement of the Canterbury Plains. Altogether Scotland played a considerable part in the earliest organised migration to New Zealand.