Stirring Chapter in Auckland's History—The Maori War

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21647, 13 November 1933, Page 55 (Supplement)

Stirring Chapter in Auckland's History—The Maori War

11'- Nkw Zkat.and Hkhat.d may bo said to have boon horn to tli* call of the bugle and tho roll of the drum. Its first number appeared when the Waikato War was at its height and when the issue of the struggle appeared 1111ceitain; at any rate, the Maoris had not so far suffered a crowning defeat. Auckland has since those days of' doubt and peril witnessed many scenes of martial enthusiasm ami excitement, tho departure of troops for foreign parts; but in 18(33 the danger lay at our own doors. The frontier and seat of war were not on far-distant shores, but scarcely more than I'O miles from the city's heart. It is strango indeed to remember that less than three generations ago Auckland lay in risk of invasion by a daring and determined Maori war-partv or scri- s of parties, which might not have accomplished much, but certainly would have given tho town tho greatest thrill and fright of its existence. Thousands of British and colonial troops, horse, foot and artillery, under an Imjwrial general, took tho field to wage war on the grand scale, but for many months tho mobilo and lightly-equipped Maori, a perfect fighting man in his native bush, made his warrior weight felt. The end was inevitable; tho Kingito warriors would bo worn down and steadily forced back; yet the difficulties were formidable, duo largely to geographical factors. Tho making of roads and bridges, bush-clearing in a country of heavy and dense forest, slowed down tho campaign. Iu order to realise the military and settlement problems of 1863, 0110 must endeavour to pieturo South Auckland covered with a great jungly forest, except for a few inconsiderable areas of newly-felled and grassed land, where the pioneer settlors were manfully struggling to make homes in the vast untamed woods that extended from the shores of tho Hauraki Gulf to tho upper waters of tho Manukau Harbour and to the Lwcr part of tho Waikato River. Through this matted, twilight forest tho Maori, moro than half stripped for the warpath, was able, from lifelong habit, to slip with speed and ease. In the.,heart of the great bushland of Hunua, on the hills between tho Wairua Ranges and the Drury side, there was discovered soon after the war began a great camp of thatched whares, sufficient to accommodate a thousand people. This place, fortunately empty when a scouting party of settlers found the clearing, was intended as a base from which war parties could raid Auckland or its outskirts. The frontier settlements 70 years ago extended in a straggling way as far as tlio Razorback Hills and the Mauku and Patumahoo farm clearings impinging on the head creeks of the~Manukau. Drury—tho Tauranga of the local Maoris —was a head of navigation in those times and as tho war went on, it became quite a busy little port, with cutters plying from Onehunga and bringing army supplies. The militarv road cut through tho forest from Drury and Ramarama —then known as Slieppard's Bush to Pokeno, over tho Pukewliau Hills, the steep up-and-down Razorbaek, was protected at intervals of 'a few miles by redoubts and stockades. Convoy and escort parties wore constantly marching along between the walls of high timber, never knowing when they would receive a sudden volley from the shadows and a charge with the long-handled tomahawk. The various small settlements were guarded bv redoubts; most of the settlers' families went into Auckland, leaving tho men alone to play their part as defenders, and many families buried most of their valuables in tho gardens and orchards,, awaiting tho return of peace. Not until the active Forest Rangers took to tho trail of the Maori was security assured to the nearer frontier settlements and to such livestock as had escaped the Maori foraging parties. Turn now to the city, or rather the town, of those days, the colony's capital, tho fortress base for a slow and costly campaign. Military colour and movement dominated Auckland in '63 and '64. Ntwly-landed regiments or detachments of regiments came marching up from the waterfront to the Albert Barracks and Fort Britomart, and marched out again to the front by way of Otahuhu. bands playing them along the way. Of one of the splendid regiments of British veterans in New Zealand it was written at tho time, that " the aspect of the 57th men, bronzed and warlike, with faces hard as the steel of their bayonets, was distinctly formidable." Of those that served in tho Waikato campaign, perhaps the 6oth Regiment—the " Hiketi-piwhete " of the Taranaki Maoris —was the finest. They were mostly Irishmen; big, handsome, whiskered, keen-eyed athletes, seasoned colonials, for they had been in New Zealand far longer than any of the other Imperial regiments. There were the 14th and the 18th (the Royal Irish), the 40th, the 50th, tho Mounted Artillery, whose men did duty as cavalry, armed with swords and revolvers. Those were the days when every able-bodied Aucklander, from 16 to 60, was perforce a citizen soldier. Those who were not members of the Auckland Rifles or other volunteer corps were enrolled in the Militia; and those who were not left to do patrol duty in and about tho town were drafted out to the large camp at

CITIZEN-SOLDIERS M

Otahuhu and further afield, for all manner of lekl duties, from building redoubts to escorting munition aiul provision carts along the Great bouth Road as far as tbo Queen's Redoubt at n? ,i?' Goncral Cameron's advanced base. The Utahului and other camps were poorly equipped in tlio early stages of the war; there was much sickness, the raw troops had inadequate shelter an -1 u ' a - ,u * sanitat i°n was neglected. It was said that sickness laid low more men than fell in the fighting. The war began in the depth ot winter, tho camps were wet and cold, and tlio roads in many places were in a fearful condition, cut up by tho enormous volume of trallic. let the spirit shown by all classes was excellent, despite tho severe trials to a peaceloving population. Auckland Harbour, too, was livelv with tho martial crAiung and going of troopships, storeships and men-of-war. Tall-masted, heavilyrigged British warships, combining steam power with sail, lay at anchor or cruised along tho coast, often landing parties for duty with rifle, cutlass and field-guns. The names of the Curacoa. tlio Miranda, tho Esk ; tho Eclipse, and tho Harstoryar ° ely associa ted with Auckland's war Onehunga, too, was a place of naval and military importance. Tho gunboat Eclipse was stationed for a time on the Manukau, and so was the Harrier. H.M.S. Niger came to and fro. „ en, very soon after tho war began, Waikato Heads saw many a vessel come and go, and Port Waikato, or Putataka, was a busy ship-build-

ing yard, arsenal and stores depot. The little paddle-steamer Avon, the first steam vessel to float on tho Waikato River, went up there in the winter of 1863. The armoured gunboat Pioneer followed, and then the Koheroa and the Rangiriri. These small armed vessels played an indispensable part in the conquest of tho Waikato.

Some of the frontier settler communities in the newly-cleared or only partly-cleared bush districts fortified their places of worship as the most suitable points of rendezvous and defence. Tho military at Papakura had the Presbyterian Church loopholed and more elaborate preparations were made against attack at tho Pukekohe East and Mauku Churches. About tho former, a low stockade of logs was built, with a shallow ditch outside it. At Mauku timbers were set close up against the walls of the building and firing apertures were cut through both church wall and palisade.

On September 14, 1863, a large war-party of Waikato Maoris, embracing tribes from a distance of over 100 miles, attacked the Pukekohe stockade, and the settler-soldiers who occupied it, only 23 or 24 in all, had a desperate battle keeping them off until Imperial reinforcements arrived from the nearest post on the Great South Road. The Maoris lost about 40 men, but not one of the defenders was wounded. One of the garrison told me —the late Mr. James McDonidd, of Takapuna, who was a boy of 14 there, serving out ammunition: "If the Maoris had charged in they could have killed us all; we had only a small supply of ammunition. But they could not get their courage up to that point."

More serious for the settlers and the militia was a hot skirmish in the bush-edge near the Mauku Church, in which the late Major D. H. Lusk had the leading part as oflicer in command. This fight was waged on the Tito Hill, a partly-cleared farm. There was somo hand-to-hand work there and fixed bayonet countered long-handled tomahawk. Two officers and six men of the white force wero killed, and of tlio Maoris probably 30 fell. Those few farmers who remained on their holdings tending their stock and guiding the plough, had to bo prepared to fight for their lives at a moment's notice. They took their Enfield rifles and ammunition with them when they went out to their day's work. Fortunate indeed wero the recruits who were found fit for service in Jackson's and Von Tempsky's Forest Rangers in 18(53. Service in the corps was the ideal kind of campaigning for the young adventurer, but not every man fitted tho job. The process of selection was severe and effective. The Rangers did not trouble about elaborate equipment or about tents, except for tho blue blankets they rigged up against tho rain. A bundle of fern was their bed and the forest foliago was their roof. In tho early stages of the war they were the eyes of the army, and their scouting work in the Wairoa and Hunua bush and neighbouring parts of the roadless forest entailed the roughest of marching, fording or swimming rivers, making bivouac wherever darkness found them. Young farmerbushmen, gold-diggers and sailors were the best

material for the force. They had learned to look after themselves, to carry heavy loads, to act swiftly in emergencies. It was in the middle of 1863 that the first of the Rangers were embodied for the Waikato campaign. Cameron's regular army was making slow progress against the Kingites. The general believed in cautious but slow tactics, and he was troubled by the fact that his rear and flanks were constantly open to attack. Bodies of Maoris, small in numbers but masters of skirmish and ambuscade, roamed the bush of Wairoa, Hunua, Ramarama and Pukekohe and lay in wait for transport convoys making their difficult way along the forest road. Any frontier settler who rashly remained on his farm risked death under the tomahawk. So there came the call for a corps more mobile than the British infantry regiments or the militia to scout the ranges, clear the bush, follow up the Maoris and engage them in their own fastnesses. The first suggestion was made in the Southern Cross of August 5, 1863, and three days later it was announced that " a busliranging party " under the command of Mr. Jackson had been formed to penetrate the bush in search of Maoris. The first Rangers company consisted of GO men under Lieutenant William Jackson, a young settler of the Hunua-Papakura district, soon promoted to be captain arid afterwards major. Toward tho end of the year a second company was formed under Captain Von Tempsky, who had been ensign with Jackson in No. 1 Company. It was as a correspondent for tho Southern Cross that Von Tempsky first marched on an expedition with Jackson, but once in the field he quickly won the respect and

However, that ultimate victory was not without its setbacks. Hangiriri lay ahead and in the ineffective effort to take it by storm the gallant Captain Mercer fell, and many another British soldier and sailor. The Maoris surrended next day and the waterway to the interior of the hostile country lay open. It was really that waterway, the Waikato, with its tributary tho Waipa, that enabled General Cameron to accomplish the subjugation of the Kingite tribes within a few months after the main advance began. That war-troubled period of the Nkw Zkalattd Hkiiald's birth has left its lasting stamp on the character and traditions of the city and tho province. It was 1870 before the last British regiment marched out of the Albert Barracks and boarded the transport for England, thus bringing to an end an Imperial military connection which had lasted for 30 years. Pride in the war service of that era is still strong among the colonists who did sentry and patrol duty on the outskirts of Auckland in the winter of 18(53; stronger still among the sons and grandsons of those who lived on the frontier of those days and risked bullet and tomahawk as they went about their daily farm work. Here and there among us there is still a veteran survivor of the campaign; the memory of those far-away days of his military youth must seem almost a dream to him. There are the veterans of much later days, many of whom can point to a soldiering ancestry. So m one way and another heredity and tradition count for something in Auckland, even though its history has not yet reached its first century.

[Specially written for "the New Zealand Hehaijb by Jatnea Cowan.J

admiration or all ranks for his confident leadership, his powers of endurance and his practical knowledge of guerilla warfare. The rangers' arms were the best procurable at this period—a breechloading carbine and a liveshot revolver. To these Von Tempsky added for his company a bowie-knife, the famous weapon of the American 'forties. Jackson did not favour the knife, but some of his company adopted it, and one of them told 1110 that ho found it a most useful bush and camp implement, though 110 never actually used it as a weapon. It was, as ho described it, " a glorified butcher's knife," with a strong, heavy blade 9in. or lOin. long; it was carried in a sheath on the belt. Von Tempsky had the knives made to his specification by an Auckland blacksmith. The workmanship was rather rough but the steel was good. He drilled the men in its use, gripped in the left hand—the right was for the revolver —with blade held along the arm, ready to flash out in a stab. Von Tempsky delighted to dash into a close-quarters skirmish with revolver and knife, as at Waiari, on tho Mangapiko, near Paterangi, early in 1864, when ho and a scoro of his men had a glorious half hour clearing a patch of scrub of hard-fighting Maoris. The Hangers had much arduous marching and scouting in the South Auckland bush before and after the great advance to Waikato began. Jackson and his company had 0110 " capital goin," as a Ranger described it, near Ararimu, in tho Wairoa Ranges, on Sunday, December 14, 1863, when they rushed a rebel camp and killed seven men out of a party of 40. They scouted well all through the campaign, sometimes, be ifc said, coming into conflict with tho regular army staff, who did not always relish the free-roving methods of the Rangers who had a way of getting into action without waiting for orders. Along the Great South Road from the great camp at Pokeno streamed an endless warlike procession! when the spring rains were over and the summer weather had fairly set in. Cavalry, artillery, infantry, British and colonial, went marching along, and with them and after them hundreds of ammunition and stores carts. Tho Waikato River was almost as animated a scene of traffic, with its armed steamers and barges and its flotillas of war-canoes manned by friendly Maoris transporting food and munitions for tho front. There was a well-organised Water Transport Corps, in which many sailors enlisted, by way of a change from deep-sea toil. A despatch from the llkkald's correspondent at tlu) Queen's Redoubt on November 19 reflects tho confident martial spirit of the times: " Woke to a glorious sunshiny morning and the trumpets ringing 'lJoot and Saddle' through tlie artillery camp, telling us that the move had begun. Wo found tho camp all alive and ascertained that a detachment was to go forward today to Meremere, to be followed by the General in force to-morrow. . . . Captain Mercer, of the artillery, had gone on with two guns, followed by tho detachment from the 65th and 40th Regiments of infantry. As they marched along with their regular step, looking so orderly and cool and strong, with the trumpets and bugles in the camp sounding the regular calls, ringing through the fresh air over the hills as martially musical and defiant as over struck the ear, it seemed like one more irresistible stride forward by the human giant civilisation against the riotous murdering savage, saying, ' Too latel Hope no more. We offered you all and you would not; now, lose all.' . . Wherever those bugles sing their music and that regular step advances, we know the sound means destruction and victory sooner or later."