ROMANTIC CAREER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20490, 15 February 1930, Page 8

ROMANTIC CAREER.

EABLY NEW ZEALAND.

WHALING CAPTAIN'S SON,

LINK WITH HONE HERE.

No. I. Endowed with a tapu from the royal lineage of Hone Heke, which rendered him sacrosanct throughout the Maori .Wars, Mr. Edwin Benjamin Evans Turner, who was born in Auckland nearly 87 years ago, possesses a store of reminiscences which touch upon every aspect of early colonial history. He is the only surviving child of the late Benjamin Turner, a whaling captain, who was informally elected as Governor of the Bay of Islands by the members of the whaling colony there seven or eight years prior to the appointment of Captain Hobson by the British Government. The relations of the Turner family with New Zealand date from the latter part of 1820, when Benjamin Turner, a member of the crew of a British whaler, was wrecked with his comrades off the Bay of Islands. Benjamin Turner was the son of a barge proprietor who conducted a network of services on the canals in Worcester, but, inheriting an adventurous spirit, which had been dormant through several generations, he ran away from the monotony of can.il work and shipped first upon a man-of-war and later upon a' whaler. It was when he was making his second voyage on the whaler, and his first trip to New Zealand, that the boat was wrecked.

Crew Killed and Eaten. The crew was cast ashore near Kororareka and all except Mr. Turner and cne companion were killed and eaten by the Maoris. Mr. Turner was saved in a romantic fashion. A daughter, cf Hone Heke, a sister *of the Hone Heke who later was to become a terror to the colonists, was present when the shipwrecked crew was marched into the pa. She took a fancy to Mr. Turner and selected him as her slave, indicating her preference by putting her arm round his neck. He immediately became tapu and he was''allowed to have the life of one of his companions spared. Mr. Turner lived with the Maoris for a number of years. Ho was married to Hone Heke's daughter by Archdeacon Henry Williams, who was at that time at the Anglican mission station at Paihia. Mr. Turner had three children, two sons and a 'daughter, but the sons were brought up by the tribe in the native way of living, and later took part in Hone Heke's raids. With the increasing yisits from whaling vessels Mr. Turner once more began to take up the occupation which had brought him to New Zealand and before long he owned a whaler of his own, in which he made many successful trips.

Selection as Governor. Mr. Turner was well known among both whites and Maoris and when the need of some organised control became •apparent at the settlement of Kororareka he was, on account of his friendship with the natives and- his personal standing among the whalers, selected as Governor of the little colon]'. In 1838 his wife died and for the next three or four years he threw himself into his work with such energy that' he became one of the wealthiest of the white settlers.

In 1840 Benjamin Turner married his second wife, Zilda Penelope Burton, a daughter of one of the first settlers to arrive in the Bay of Islands after the appointment of Captain Hobson as Governor. He was present at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 and when Bome time later Kororareka was sacked by the Maoris the tapu which had fallen npon him some 20 years previously stood him in good stead. Five wooden huts belonging to Benjamin Turner were, with the exception of the mission station buildings, the only European property which escaped the wrath of the natives. Bemoval to Auckland. Alarmed for the safety of his wife, Mr. Turner moved to Auckland, where he bought a considerable amount of property. He first acquired some dwelling-houses on the site now occupied by the Manchester Unity Building, at the corner of Vic-, toria and Hobson Streets, and after his retirement from the whaling trade, he purchased the Royal George Hotel at Newmarket. At that time the Royal George, owing to its situation beyond the confines of the young settlement of Auckland, was frequented by the lowest types of humanity to be found in the colony. Beneath the hotel was a maze of underground caverns, which were used by the undesirables as retreats when the attentions of the military authorities rendered their position uncomfortable. Mr. Edwin Turner was born in a cottage on the hill between Victoria Street and Durham Street, the third son of Benjamin Turner by his second wife. The eldest son died in infancy, and the second son, William, who was born at Kororareka, Was Edwin's playmate, while the family lived at the Royal George. The father, although he had been a whaler for many years, and had also seen service in tlie Mediterranean with a British man-of-war, found the Royal George too difficult a proposition to look after, and he remained there only 12 months. During that time he built the first stone cottage in Newmarket, which he named Retreat Cottage, and there he retired, disposing of his interest in the hotel to .William yTuckey.

Maori Executed in Olty.

Speaking of his boyhood in Auckland, Mr. Edwin Turner related many thrilling incidents of early history. He remembers quite well the hanging of the Maori, at the corner of Queen and Victoria Streets, for the murder of an Englishwoman and others in the Bjy of Islands. / Crowds of sightseers filled the township on the evening before the execution, and Barrack Hill, now Albert Park, was black with farm-carts and buggies from as far away as Otahuhu and Waiukru.

Edwin/Turner was sent to school at the old Wesleyan College, conducted by the Fletcher brothers in a brick building in Upper .Queen Street, on the site of the People's Palace. Hia school days, however, were not happy ones, as he was afflicted with a seemingly incurable stutter, and was painfully shy in consequence ' At the age of 14£ lie ran away from homeland shipped as pantry-boy on the •White Star sailing-ship Phoenix, bound