The Whaling Station on Taieri Island.

Otago Witness, Issue 2545, 24 December 1902, Page 47 (Supplement)

The Whaling Station on Taieri Island.

By F. A. JOSEPH.

Illustrations. — (1) Taieri Island, from a painting by Mi J. M' Asian. <2) Bill Palmer, the Last of the Old Whalers. (3) The Maori Leap (see ipage 39). (4) A Scene on the Taieri River (see page 39). At the mouth of the Taieri River, its rock-bound eastern side breasting the deep swell of the Pacific, stands a picturesque islet, around which a halo of romance clings ; grim ■sentinel guarding the portals of the lovely river, so dear to the memory of the last representatives of the once powerful Ngatimamoe tribe who dwelt by its tide. The Island of Moturata stands, like Samson, shorn of its glory. As the Ngatimamoe knew it, the island was forest clad from shore to summit in the lovely southern rata, which, about Christmastide, puts forth its bright scarlet blossoms, a blaze of brilliant colour set amid deep emerald. Now the islet, some half mile long, and about a quarter of a mile wide, rises up bare and brown to a height of 300 ft. The noble rata forest is as extinct as the race of hardy whalers who had their homes upon it early in the past century, and stunted bracken fern and tussock grass have taken the place of the forest. Not even a stump remains to show that a tree ever took root on this storm-swept isle. At the whaling station, however, there is a trace. The stone fireplaces of the wooden chimneys of the whalers' huts still stand on the western slope of the island, and the spot where the whales were " cut in " and " tried out," is still marked by the remains of the stone and brickwork on which the huge try pots stood, and the rock face hard by is still smoke-grimed. When I first visited Taieri Island three of the great pots stood awash at half-tide near the trying-out station. Two were subsequently removed by settlers to boil pig-feed in, and the third has been buried beneath the accumulations of sand that have since changed the aspect of the western or river side of the island, where the whalers had their boat harbour. Standing on the summit of the island, with the boom of the surf, which tosses the spray high over the rocks on the eastern, or ocean side, in one's ears, it is easy to imagine the echo of distant voices coming across the void that lies between the present and that distant past, when Moturata was the scene of busy life, and when from the same vantage point the head man of the whaling party <iirected the boats racing. with each other to be first amongst a school of passing whales. But there is no sign of life stirring now, save when a timid rabbit scuttles to its burrow on your approach, or when the wheeling seagull utters his plaintive cry, as if challenging intrusion upon his domain. The fire-hardened rocks, cast in Nature's mould amid the turmoil of volcanic forces, still resound to the roar of the surf, as the green curling waves break on the shore and send the spume and spray dashing high around. The grim rocks and beetling crags seem to bid defiance to time, and their contour is the same to-day as when the Maoris, fresh over the sea from far-away Hawaiki, first beheld the wooded islet, and named it Moutrata — rata island. Taieri Island was last inhabited in the heyday of the Taupeka rush, when the old clay roads became unfit for the heavy stream of traffic that passed over them, and when thousands of the " New Iniquity " had invaded the fair domain of the " Old Identity," and were on their way to the diggings. In these stirring days a pilot station was set up on Taieri Island, and the story of Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday was again recalled by the nicknames applied by facetious ones to Pilot Irvin and his assistant, Pilot Fullerton. But the improvement of the roads obviated the necessity of sending goods by the small coasters by way of the Taieri River, and the old pilot house soon fell into ruins. A

It is not given to many men to face such stirring perils as the subject — Hicks, photo. of our illustration.

few house piles mark the spot where it stood ; all else has been obliterated by the rank growth of vegetation on a generous soil. But the time of which I write, when the nineteenth century was still young, Taieri Island was a place of importance. It was while Captain Williams's whaling station was in full swing that, the two brothers Palmer, the younger of whom is still living (at the time of writing), at Henley, came to Dusky Bay. The Palmers, Edwin and William, were Sidney" natives, as those who were born in that town used to be called. Their father was a soldier, who fought under Wellington in the Peninsular War, and who subsequently came to Sydney with his regiment to look after the convicts in the early , days of the convict settlement. I The young Palmers, with the martial tial blood of generations of Englishmen burning hot in their veins, early sought some* more fitting outlet for their energies than the humdrum life of a convict station afforded. The new industry across | the Tasman Sea, on the stormswept New Zealand coast, held the promise of a field of adventure such as their natures pined for. Nearly three-quarters of a century ago, "Old Bill Palmer," as a younger generation has designated him, came, along with his brother Edwin, to Preservation Inlet. It was towards the close of the year 1831, when the old man, now tottering to the grave at 90 years of age, and who was but a stripling in his twentieth year, came to New Zealand. His brother was 15 years older. No wonder that his face looks rugged, and the snows of age have blanched his shock head of hair. Nine decades of a century leave their mark upon the toughest constitution, and wonderful men these must have been to have endured the inroads of time so long, and to have defied the destructive influences of the wild life they led. The earl}- whaling days brought many fearless, smart men to these coasts, and amongst the most distinguished, at a time when courage and skill were invaluable, there were no braver men and no more skilful whalers than Ned and Bill Palmer. Edwin Palmer acted as coastal pilot for Mr Tuckett in his memorable cruise in the schooner Deborah, in 1844. William Palmer also remembers Tuckett well, having taken him from Tautuku to the next river, the Tahakopa, in a whale boat on the return journey from the south. j At the time of the Deborah's cruise the whaling station on Taieri Island was in charge of the renowned Tommy Chasland, whose name has been perpetuated in the promontory known as Chasland's Mistake, and latterly by a county riding being named Chaslands. Tommy Chasland was a halfcaste Australian, or New Holland black, as the aboriginies were then termed ; and by those who knew him intimately said not to have been at all a bad sort of fellow. He and William Palmer were partners at Tautuku at an earlier date, but Chasland subsequently became manager for the Weller Bros, at Taieri Island. What manner of man Chasland's father was is not now known, but the redoubtable Tommy was about as fearless as a man well could be, and the strain of black blood in his veins gave him that skill and cunning so much prized in a slayer of whales. Yet, in spite of his well-tried skill Chasland sometimes committed errors of judgment in approaching a whale, and on one- occasion nearly paid the penalty of rashness with his life. It was while he was at Tautuku in partnership with Bill Palmer that the mishap occurred, which cost him the loss of a whale boat and half his crew. It was on a June morning that a rift in the fog showed a school of whales in the offing, and as the fog gave signs of lifting the boats were launched and gave chase. Tommy Chasland, with unerring skill, was soon fast to a whale, behind which the boat was rushing at high speed into the fog which began to close down again. All went well until the boat came close up to the whale. Chasland allowed the boat to come a little too near, in order to make the thrust of the whale lance the more effective The lance got home all right, but the whale at the same time made a plunge, and by a single stroke of its mighty flukes shore the boat in half, sending three of the crew (one European and two Maoris) to the bottom. Chasland, Sam Perkins and a Maori clung to the remaining half of the boat, the other half being shattered to matchwood. After waiting a long time, wet through and shivering in the fog, with no signs )f help coming, Chasland divested himself of all his clothing md ventured on the attempt to swim ashore, although the wrecked boat was good six miles off shore at that time. Promising his mates to send help if he got to land he bade >hem good-bye and plunged into the wintry waters. He lad not been gone an hour when two of the other boats :ame along and rescued Sam Perkins and the Maori. The atter, however, did not afterwards recover from the effects >f the long exposure in the icy water. The boats cruised ibout in a zig-zag fashion, and the crews cooeed in vain, till yell in shore, when the search for Chasland was abandoned md the redoubtable whaler given up for lost. The circumtance was reported to the men at the whaling station, and he deepest gloom was experienced at the supposed loss of the aost daring man who ever lanced a whale. The men mourned Chasland as dead ! Not a bit of it. They little knew the aarvellous powers of endurance of the man. Late in the fternoon one of the men noticed something moving through he fog along the beach, and soon it was distinguished as a aked man. A shout of joy went up, and several went off to leet him. Tommy Chasland had successfully covered the rhole distance that lay between him and his only hope of afety at the time of the accident by swimming, and seemed one the worse for his experience. A dry suit of clothes and pannikin of rum wiped out all trace of the adventure, and ihasland was ready for the fray again. The whaling station at Taieri Island in 1844 was a fouroat station, and the boat steerers were Harry Wickson Tom .shwell, Jim Phillips, and Charlie Eowley— Englishmen srery one of them, who had either left their country for their mntry s good, or merely in quest of a life of adventure In :cordance with the customs of the time each whaler had a Laon wife. As the Maoris very jealously guarded the honour

, of their women folk, the whalers found it wise policy to take to themselves wives from among the native women, who I were generally found willing partners to the bargain. Chasland's wife, Puna, was a relation of the Otakou chief, Taiaroa, | who, at that time, had his headquarters at Port Levi. Concerning this woman Mr Tuckett wrote : " She is one of the few Maori women that I have seen capable of being a helpmate to a civilised man, and they keep a very comfortable 1 fireside, not the less so from the bleak barrenness which surrounds their dwellings; nowhere, perhaps, do 20 Englishmen I reside on a spot so comfortless as this naked, inaccessible isle." Further describing the island, Mr Tuckett add 9: " Sometimes lat low water there is a dry bank to the mainland ; at other times the entire beach has shifted, and the mouth of j the river has taken its place." The bank is a. shifty thing i even to this day, and while there are times when, at low tide, one may walk dryshod from the mainland to the island, at other times, in Mr Tuckett's words," the waves break to and fro so that it seems impossible to get across without being swamped." The whalers built their huts on the western slope, where now is a rank growth of tall fern, and where a few mutton birds rear their annual brood. Of a fine day the sun shines warm against the slope, but when a S.W. gale sweeps over the island, and lifts the spray from the curving breakers, no bleaker place for human habitation could well be imagined. The pilots had their houses at the northern end, where the shoulder of the hill gave some shelter from southerly winds and weather; but it was exposed to the full force of northerly and southeast gales, the latter being the most disagreeable, for when a south-easter blows home the east coast of the island is exposed to the full force of the giant waves that roll shoreward and fall with deafening crash on the rocks, sending the spray in drenching showers clean over the lower slopes of the island. The site chosen by the whalers was completely sheltered from that wind. It was, moreover, the most convenient for the men who had the try-works and the boats to look after close below them. The fresh water cave, where a supply of the clearest, coolest fresh water can be obtained on the hottest summer day, was also close at. hand. It is the only place on the island where fresh water can be obtained, and the pilots had to carry it right across to the other end, where their house stood, since it was impossible to use the water off the roof so often wet with salt sea spray. Dr Monro, who accompanied Tuckett, gives a description of the Waikouaiti whaling station, which fairly well describes whaling stations in general at that time. He says the shed in which the oil was tried out smelt " like a thousand filthy lamps " ; while "the whole beach was strewed with gigantic fragments of the bones of whales, and flocks of gulls, cormorants, and other sea birds, and savage looking pigs prowled about to pick up the refuse. The place altogether, like other whaling stations, s a picture of the most perfect neglect of anything like I order or neatness. The huts in which the men live — rickety things — are stuck about in all directions, and not one of them possesses a garden. There seemed, however, to be abundance of poultry, as well as dogs and pigs; and another common feature of whaling stations was also to be seen there in perfection, in the shape of a variety of dirty native women, half-dressed in tawdry European clothes, with a proportionate number of half-caste children." Dr Monro, in his journal, embodied in Dr Hocken's book, refers to the landing of the party at Taieri Island, when trying-out operations were in full swing. He says : " Close to where we landed an enormous whales head, stripped of its blubber, was anchored, which I mistook for a large rock, and on a projecting ledge the process of trying-out was going on busily, and diffusing a most grateful odour of train oil." The landing place at the boat harbour he describes thus : "We were rushed up a species of wooden railway by a following sea, which thundered into foam about us, a number of men being ready to receive the boat and drag it high and dry. We then ascended a sort of staircase along the edge of a steep cliff, with a rude balustrade to hold on by, and on a little platform at the top found a number of grass huts, the habitations of the whalers. We were here most hospitably entertained by a Mr Chasland, the head man on the island, while his active Maori wife acquitted herself most respectably of the household duties of cooking and bedmaking." Of all those fearless, reckless men, who found the wild adventurous life of whale fishing congenial, old Bill Palmer alone remams in the land of the living_ a link with a past tTh hf^M °?1? 1V v° n - u Parara > the Maoris call him, and riti, his Maori wife, bore him nine children, of whom several are still living. Later in life he married a half-caste woman ts° t?t? 4! mOt u 6r ° f 15 Children " Like fche Patriarchs of old Bill Palmer has left behind him a numerous progeny of children and grandchildren ; aye, and great-grandchildren, ,m -a Do^D 0^ through the generations there is nothing tells J^-T^ , °° d ' and his no marvellous thing that some of Bill Palmer s sons should display the couarge of their sires

In that awful night when the Wairarapa lay on the rocks with surf-swept decks, and the pitiless waves were beating the life out of the shivering wretches clinging to the rigging, young Harry Palmer worked his way aft at great risk and with infinite difficulty with a rope, which he made fast to the after rigging, and so enabled some to scramble forward to a place that afforded greater safety. Poor Harry helped

old occupation of whaling died^ out he set about boat building. Vvhen I first made the acquaintance of Bill Palmer, living then near Henley, he was a man rather above medium height, hi he and active, with keen blue eyes, and energetic manner. That his eye was keen and hand practical I have often seen verified by the unerring aim with which he used to harpoon the porpoises from the fishing boat, in the days when groper

but at 90 there are few who can recall at will the scenesaiid incidents of a life thickly crowded with adventure. The surf still beats on the rock-bound coast, and as thesirii ghosts climb the rocks on Moturata, they bemoan thepast with its scenes of busy life. Of that past there re— mains but a trace to mark with the stamp of reality whatmight otherwise, at this distant date., be deemed romance-