TRADING WITH THE MAORIS

Southland Times, Issue 22758, 7 December 1935, Page 13

TRADING WITH THE MAORIS

Philip Tapsell, known in his youth as Hans, was a Danish sailor, who adopted a Manx name so that he might sail in British ships. He was at sea for thirty-five years, usually in whalers, and then he settled down as a trader among the Maoris, carrying on for forty years in that occupation. Tapsell served with the Danes against the British, and saw the battle of Copenhagen, he was at St. Helena when Napoleon was in captivity there, and he became the founder of a sub-tribe of the Arawa, Whanau-a-Tapihana, (Tapsell’s Children) which now numbers over a hundred. After his sea-faring, Tapsell married a young Maori chieftainess, and he settled down in the Bay of Plenty, where the village of Maketu was his headquarters. His Danish name was Hans Homman Felk and he died in 1873, as the tombstone over his grave in the Pakeha-Maori cemetery near Wharekahu testifies. These are the signposts of a remarkable career, of a life which vies with the best romances written and James Cowan producing a moving biography, has brought Tapsell back to life. For Tapsell life was all adventure and he continued to find excitement when he was ninety years of age. His later years were marked by many disappointments, but he never lost confidence and he retained to the end the simplicity of character which won for him and kept so many friends. When the end was near early in 1873, he called his children and grandchildren and gave them his last message: If it please God to take me now, which I think He will, do not put me in a coffin, but sew ine up in a blanket. Do not cry for me after the manner of the Maoris, but I should like two guns to be fired, one to be fired at the moment I die and the other when I am lowered Into'my grave. Let that be the only mourning for Tapsell.. Bear well in mind my word to you all that you do not enclose me in a coffin, for men whom I consider far greater than myself, my brothers and fellow seamen, when they died had no coffin. My last wishes are that I be buried in the same manner. I >wish you all to consent to this before I go so that I may die happy. Had. it not been for my daughter Toti being buried here my wish would have been to be sewed in a piece of canvas and with a shot at my feet to be lowered into the sea, the grave of all my former comrades. In those words much of Tapsell is revealed, and in filling out the picture Cowan has given us a valuable addition to the romance of New Zealand’s early days. “A Trader in Cannibal Land” by James Cowan (Messrs A. H. and A. W. Reed, Dunedin).