Stewart Island

Southland Times, Issue 22132, 28 September 1933, Page 2

Stewart Island

; Pages from History ; ■ Colonization Schemes, t S 1827 J

By

“The Native.”

The schooner Prince of Denmark in the course of her voyage went into very high latitudes, and experienced weather of the utmost severity. One man well known in Sydney, Captain Rook, got frost bitten, lost the use of his limbs, and died. While the vessel was lying at the Bay of Islands, with only seven men. on board, the rest being absent with the sealing gangs, Hongi, the Maori chief, went on board with a number of natives and took everything moveable and within his reach. No violence was used but everything was taken and the natives went quickly ashore. So quickly was the whole thing done that although there were two whaling vessels at hand no assistance could be rendered. From what transpired subsequently the presumption is that Stewart on this voyage visited Stewart Island and decided to establish a timber and ship building yard at Port Pegasus, the harbour he had surveyed in 1809. The object of the syndicate was to collect flax and timber and this would naturally occupy Stewart’s attention first. Judged by the cargo, Stewart’s first trip in the Prince of Denmark was a complete failure. A cargo of 450 seal skins would hardly pay crew’s wages. Of course plans must have been put in train for subsequent trade.

On 19th January, 1826, Stewart sailed on his second voyage. . . . Giving Stewart two shipbuilders to Pegasus would bring the date to about April 1826, and operations had not long been commenced when the Port had the honour of a visit from the emigrant fleet of the New Zealand Company, which was being floated in London, when Stewart was there preparing his own little venture. The company having commenced operations, despatched two vessels to New Zealand, at an expense exceeding £20,000. It obtained the promise of a charter from the Government of George the Fourth and acquired tracts of. land, among other places at Herd’s Point on. the Hokianga, at Manakaw, on Waikeke Island, and at Parva, on the borders of the Thames. The first batch of their immigrants reached New Zealand in 1826 in the ship Rosanna and the cutter Lambton, the former under Captain Herd and the latter under Captain Barnett. Herd had command of the expedition. That gentleman took them into Port Pegasus on their road to the Thames. Herd spent six weeks in Port Pegasus, much of the time being devoted to ascertaining the correct position of the various spots in and around, and found that as given by Stewart in 1809 they were not to be relied upon. Surprised at some of the inaccuracies he called the attention of Stewart, who was there at the time, to the discrepancies, and learned that all Stewart’s work had been done with a quadrant and a boat compass, but with no artificial horizon. The wonder was that the chart was as accurate as it turned out to be. Herd’s positions were generally accepted as correct by the mercantile marine of the world.

Port Pegasus. Describing Port Pegasus, Herd says: —“This harbour or sound would contain the whole Navy of Great Britain secure from all winds; at present it affords a station for New South Wales seal fishers who are not very successful. A ship bound from India to Peru or Chili may, in case of carrying away a topmast or yard, supply herself here or recruit her water; which, by the way is not very good. When we were here it had a reddish tinge, and imparted that colour to every thing it

touched and was also very astringent which we thought was caused by the decayed vegetables it ran through. This is the most rainy and boisterous part of the world I was ever in.” On his road to Pegasus he passed the Snares and took particular note of their position and general appearance. Captain Lovett was the first to bring to Hobart Town the news of Stewart’s settlement:—“Captain Stewart of the ship Prince of Denmark had also arrived from England and had commenced his settlement on his own on Stewart’s Island which since the discoveries of Captain Cook was supposed to form the Southern entremity of Tavai Poenamboo (Te Wai Pounamu) in the Southern island; but which Captain Stewart first discovered to be an extensive island separated from the main by a strait of 20 miles.” Here we have set up for the first time apparently, the claim of Stewart to be the actual discoverer of the Island, at a date 17 years after the event. The editor of the “Oriental Navigator” when publishing Stewart’s surveys in 1816 did not mention such an interesting piece of history. Herd who spoke to Stewart himself when at Pegasus at this time, says nothing of the claim. It remained for Lovatt, of the small Hobart Town sealer, to declare that fact to the world. The author therefore concludes that it is one of Stewart’s contentions, made when the syndicate was being formed, which found its way into the prospectus but was ineligible for a place in the Warden’s report.

Stewart left New Zealand on 21st August and returned to Sydney on Bth September, 1826, with 460 sealskins and a ton and a half of flax. Probably he sailed from Pegasus. Another voyage a failure. So far the prospects of success for Stewart were not bright, the third—and the last—voyage was commenced on 3rd November.

Away down in the lonely isles of the Antipodes on an almost precipitous ledge of rock and tussock, is a solitary grave. Over it, until recently taken away by some vandal, was an old totara board with a very faded inscription. In the year 1888, it was reported to have been deciphered, by a party who then examined it, to read as follows:—

To the M Foster, chief officer of the schooner Prince of Denmark, who was “unfortunately drowned—Boat Arbour—l4th day of December 1825: The date cannot have been deciphered correctly because the Prince of Denmark was within four days sail of Sydney on 14th December, 1825. It could be 1826 because she sailed from Sydney on 3rd November of that year. The month or the year has been wrongly deciphered. Captain Bollons of the S. S. Hinemoa who saw the old totara board, states that 1826 was the date thereon not 1825. This little fragment, picked up in that out of the way spot, shows us what desperate attempts Stewart was making to bring in a profit to his syndicate. The trip was away down to the Southern Islands and to the Antipodes in particular. This was in 1826, and we remember that in 1805, when in the employ of the firm of Campbell and Co. it was William Stewart, as master of the Venus, who opened the trade. Stewart’s scheme was doomed. The third trip of the Prince of Denmark did not redeem the financial failure of the first two and the inevitable had to take place. What the exact position was is not clear but it was such as to bring about the sale of the schooner. After the sale she appears running between Sydney and Hobart Town, under the command of Captain Thomas Wright. Stewart’s colonization and trade scheme ended in disaster. His two rivals of 1825 suffered a like fortune, both schemes coming to an untimely end. (Murihiku 1909.)