The Conquerors

Southland Times, Issue 21896, 23 December 1932, Page 16

The Conquerors

I Saga of the Stations | I ■ i ('By the Wanderer.) g

FAIRLIGHT STATION AND OTHERS. CAPTAIN HOWELL AND FAMILY. (RANGITIRA MITIOWA.) 1834—1932. But as we meet and touch each day The many travellers on our way. Let every such brief contact be A glorious helnful ministry! The contact of the Soil and Seed; Each Riving to the other’s need— Each helning on the other’s best, And blessing each as well as blest! (From S. Coolidge.) On returning from his honeymoon in Sydney, Captain Howell brought back with him his stepfather and that gentleman’s family, his mother having died in Australia from shock, caused by a raid on the house by bushrangers. Mrs Stevens and the family had been given a grant of land free at Hunter’s River. The Stevens family had come out in search of their relation, Captain Howell, for a good while after he departed from England papers and proofs reached his mother that her son—John Howell—was a beneficiary under the will of the late Duke of Portland, to property, in England. All the way over on the boat, Mrs Stevens declared that she was being both followed and watched, and that her footsteps were being dogged by an enemy, and she had that feeling very strongly, all the time whilst in Australia. They had their house on Hunter’s Hill raided by bushrangers, and then these thieves, failing to find the proofs and papers they desired, finally burnt the house down, and the Stevens family only got out in time. All these tragic events proved too much for Mrs Stevens, and she never rallied after the shock of the fire and afterwards passed on, not living to see her beloved son again. On this voyage also Captain Howell brought over a number of cattle and horses for his station at Jacobs River, and it is claimed that this was the first shipment of stock to be brought so far south. It was the beginning of a great trade between Australia and Southland in horses, cattle and sheep, and by training men to take the greatest care in transhipping stock, and landing ijiem, Captain Howell made just as great a success of this venture as he hid made of the whaling and sealing industry. He ran his stock on the beach and on the green banks of the Jacob’s River. When, in after years, settlers came from Britain, Australia and North of New Zealand, they bought bullock teams, horses, cattle and sheep, as well as land from Captain Howell. When he arrived at Jacob’s River with his relations, Captain Howell was faced with the problem of where the Stevens family should reside, for they were too nervous, after all the bloodthirsty stories they had heard, to live very far away from the gallant Captain’s protection, so he hit upon the plan of giving his step-father the important post of manager of the Shoredepot, or Marine Store, as it was then styled. This store, which sold everything from a needle to an anchor, and plenty of popular beverage's for the thirsty souls, did a roaring trade, and Mr Stevens never regretted his acceptance of the offer to migrate from Australia. This store was on the site where now stands the Misses McKellar and Hunt’s drapery store, only it was further back from the street. The Misses Stevens being the first white women to land in Riverton, were much sought after, and the first white wedding was solemnized when Miss Ann Stevens married John Paulin and set up their home where the Carrier’s Arms Hotel now stands. The Maoris were most excited about this wedding for was not the bride a relation of their beloved chief, and they cleared and stumped the bush around this little home, and planted a goodly area with the useful potato. In and around the settlement of Riverton was clothed with the beautiful virgin bush which grew right to the banks of the river. The oldest pioneers tell of the golden kowhai trees in full blossom overhanging the Jacob’s river, of the beauties of the untouched bush, and the music of the bell-bird, the deep throated tui, and the trustful weka, wrens and robins. Many among us yet still regret the passing of the forests and the vanishing of the native birds, but the clanging axe and the ravishing fire made a funeral pyre of much natural beauty in many parts of Southland, and the great glory of the forest is departing. In 1842 Captain Howell began to build a fine vessel of 130 tons, at least. Mr George Pauley (father of George Pauley of Colac Bay) had contracted to build this great ship, at the shipyards which were on the site where afterwards Mr Beer built the Western Star office. This vessel took nine months to build and all the little settlement was most excited when the day came for the launching of the Amazon. All was ready, the chocks had been knocked away, the dramatic breaking of the champagne bottles—in this case rum—had given the ship her name, and she began to move slowly from her cradle

drawn by stout hawsers stretched across to the north side, where the windlasses on Captain Howell’s other two vessels were drawing her to her element. Without any warning one of the stays keeping her upright was dragged over on top of Mr Pauley, who was killed instantly, and the accident cast a deep gloom over the crowd who had come to see the launching. Such was the superstition of the Maoris that they immediately predicted ill-fortune for the Amazon, a prophecy that eventually came to pass, for many years after the Amazon was wrecked off the Bluff.

At this period Captain Howell had the great misfortune to lose his girlwife, and placing his small son and daughter with Mrs John Paulin, Captain Howell sailed away in the Amazon with a cargoe of oil for Sydney, ?na whilst there the vessel was. engaged by the British Government with other vessels to take sixty-two families of French immigrants from Bank’s Peninsula to Tahiti. On his journey to that tropical island, the Captain became so ill that he was unable to work the ship, and, as a result, they were in a sad plight until they fell in with an American man-of-war which sent a doctor aboard. The Captain recovered and the journey was resumed and the Amazon sailed into Tahiti where the Tahiti Government engaged Captain Howell to take would-be fortune seekers to California where the famous goldfields were attracting all sorts and conditions of men from Tahiti and all the nearby islands. Captain Howell consulted his Maori crew, and they were delighted at the prospect of going to the Great Diggings and the vessel was soon crowded with a cargoe of goldseekers. However, California was at that time a fearful place, where life was cheap and murder and crime were the order of the day, and through some criminal outrage, the first mate was murdered.

The New Zealanders seemed to have no luck in this new land, and there were too many card-sharpers and crooks for their fancy, so the Captain had no trouble in persuading his crew to return to Sydney. Here they loaded 500 Merino sheep, thus bringing the first shipment of sheep to Jacob’s River. This flock was in charge of a Mr Theo Daniels, who tended and landed them with the greatest care possible and they throve splendidly on the terraces above where the Wallace Hospital now stands, for in those days before the advent of the rabbit plague, Southland and the land surrounding Riverton was covered with rich pastures and many valuable native grasses.

On Captain Howell’s return, two years after - the death of the pretty girlwife, Koi-Koi, he married Miss Brown, daughter of Captain Brown who had a sealing and whaling station at Codfish Island. Captain Howell then bought ten of the newly surveyed sections in the town of Riverton. Murihiku, now known as Southland, had been purchased from the Maoris by the New Zealand Government, and when the transaction had been completed by the Commissioner of Crown Lands —a Mr Mantell—Mr Townsend came down to survey the town of Riverton. On the section where Dr. Trotter’s house now stands, the Captain built what was reckoned in the pioneering days quite a mansion and here he and his wife lived, and in that historic house many of their children were bom.

Another wedding of interest took place in Riverton, for Miss Elizabeth Stevens married Mr Theo Daniels and he built a house and store in Palmerston street. Mr Daniels was, after many years, one of our earliest members of Parliament for Wallace. Captain Howell’s Whaling fleet consisted of the Amazon, the Frolic, Postboy, and the Eliza, which was quite a historic craft, for this same Eliza had originally belonged to Sir John Franklin when he was Governor of Tasmania, before he set out on his ill-fated journey to the bleak Arctic regions. She was a tengun boat, and was purchased by Captain Howell just before his brave but fatal expedition. The Amazon, true to the Maori prophecy at her christening, was not long in New Zealand waters before she was totally wrecked on Stirling’s Rock at the Bluff. She was loaded with sixty-five tons of oil, and twelve tons of whalebone, and Captain Howell was a very heavy loser when it is learnt that oil was then valued at £35 and whale bone £7oo—seven hundred pounds a ton. However, Captain Howell was a man of dauntless courage and energy, and in four months’ time the Frolic sailed away to Sydney market with a full cargo of first grade sperm oil, worth ninety pounds a ton. The return trips in those days saw the whalers laden with cattle, horses and sheep which always brought very good prices from the new settlers, who were blazing the trail and marching steadily inwards and opening up the country.

Captain Howell had been given a huge slice of Murihiku when he was elected a Maori Chief at the occasion of his first marriage. When the whaling and sealing days were over, Captain Howell determined to explore inland. One of his sheep runs extended from Fairfax to Wrey’s Bush and included Nightcaps. At what is now known as Flint’s Bush, Captain Howell erected an extremely fine house which he called Eastbourne, after his native town in England' Even in those days the mineral wealth of Nightcaps in its possession of good coal was known to the many shepherds who went the rounds of the Captain’s vast station, for they burnt it in their huts and when the bullock waggons used to convey stores to those far away shepherd’s huts, they used to re-load with coal for the blacksmith’s shop which was then run bv a Mr Armstrong. All the old familiar names have left landmarks of the old times and many prominent whalers and sailors have given us memories which will always remain. There are Howell’s Point, Howell’s Road, Howell’s Bush, Paulin’s Bush and Steven’s Bush. Captain Howell held Burwood Station for a short time and then acquired Fairlight, which is south of Kingston. This he intended to live upon with Eastbourne as the home station. One hears of perhaps the very first ploughing match at Flint’s Bush in 1865. Amongst those competing was the late James Hamilton of that district, whose team of bullocks did such good work. At the dinner and very happy evening that followed this first ploughing match, Captain Howell, who presided, made a great speech where he said in his happy sailor fashion: “I do not know much about ploughing the land, but I can plough, the sea.” The jovial captain was the life and soul of the party, and this evening lived in the memory of the ploughmen and farmers for many years. There was plenty of Wallace whisky which was legally manufactured in the district in the old days. Things went with a great swing, many songs were sung in Gaelic and English, and many stirring stories of daring deeds were told and after passing many votes of thanks all round, they decided that, for the great good and progress of the district, they must hold frequent ploughing matches, to which the company all agreed with no opposition.

We had once a lovely land belted with Red Pine Bell-birds in the leafy trees where the ratas twine Fems upon the terraces, flax upon the Plain Take the flower and turn the hour, call back these days again Far and Far our homes are set round the Seven Seas Woe for us if we forget, we who hold by these. (Adapted from Rudyard Kipling).