ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21156, 1 October 1938, Page 5

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

Irishman in Hokianga Extraordinary Land Transactions Thousands of Acres For Opening a Port On the Hokianga River there was a century ago a flourishing shipyard, the property of Lieutenant McDonnell, R.N. This shipyard, Thomas McDonnell had bought (from a bankrupt estate at auction in Sydney) in 1830, together with a complete ship, which he afterwards fitted out as the Sir George Murray. McDonnell was a man of enterprise who had knocked about the world a good deal. From the British Navy he had passed to the service of the East India Company. Then he had branched out on his own account, buying a schooner and entering the China trade. This soon brought him south to the colony of New South Wales. He was now a man of fortytwo, burdened with a wife and a growing family. He had a good practical knowledge of the Navy's timber requirements and he did not mind living in outlandish places. He did not go bankrupt like his predecessors at Hokianga. Instead he made a contract with the Admiralty to supply spars and masts for the Navy, and prospered. Peace-Making Among the Maoris Lleteuant McDonnell played a prominent part in the affairs of early white settlement in New Zealand. He had a fine house on a terrace above the river. To Impress the natives he had mounted 11 cannon on a nearby knoll. He claimed great influence with the Maoris, posing as the peace-maker in their inter-tribal conflicts. He punished Maoris who had offended him by not speaking to them until they had made amends. To enhance his local prestige, he got himself appointed, in 1835, Additional British Resident in New Zealand, much to the annoyance of James Busby, the official salaried Resident. He was actively trading round the coast in his two ships, for he had added the Tool to his fleet. He is said to have navigated Foveaux Strait and to have discovered Port Ahurirl, while on the West Coast he dubbed the Wanganui River "Knowsle#’i” after Lord Stanley’s country seat. All the time he was buying land from the Maoris for the usual miscellany of blankets, dress lengths, tobacco, powder and muskets. His Kaipara estates he acquired simply by sailing the Tooi into Kaipara Harbour. This was the gratitude of the local chief for his proving that the white men’s ships could cross the bar and come in to trade. In all he thought he had bought about 400 square miles.

Estate Sold to the New Zealand Company

McDonnell was in England in 1839. The New Zealand Colonisation Asso-

ciation, soon to blossom into the New Zealand Company, bought him out on curiously generous and elastic terms. By their agreement of April 9, 1839. McDonnell received £lOOO down, the promise of a further £4OOO within five years, an annuity at the rate of £3OO a year during this five years, and a further commission of five per cent on sales to emigrants. But the Company undertook to settle a thousand souls “not coming under the denomination of squatters’’ on his land before the five years ended. On top of all this McDonnell kept his homestead at Te Horeke and its water-driven mill, together with three thousand acres on lease at a peppercorn rent from the Company. Chiefs Dispute Purchase Governor Bourke, of New South Wales, who knew him, had not called McDonnell of a “sanguine and hasty temperament” for nothing. His title to the land he had sold the Company was disputed by the local Maori chiefs, and in November 1840, McDonnell had to make a new bargain with the Company. His annuity came to an end, but he was to be taken io New Zealand at the Company’s expense with his whole family. When l.e returned to New Zealand it was to find that the Company was disillusioned with his land. It came back on his hands. He angrily alleged that the Company had been playing with him the whole time in order to prevent him selling his land for colonisation in competition with his own. Large Land Claims Reduced But there was now a new law in the land. All these lavish claims to hundreds of square miles of territory had to pass before the jaundiced gaze of the Land Commissioners. McDonnell’s chiefs, whom he had claimed to rule with the iron hand in the velvet glove, were so ungrateful as to reduce him to two areas of 200 and 800 acres. Not even a trip to England in 1844 was of any avail, except that it gives us the interesting answers to the questions put to him by a British Parliamentary Committee. In the end, after petitioning the New Zealand Parliament in 1856, he was awarded a mere 2,560 acres, with compensation if the Maoris did not allow him possession of the whole area. No wonder he died poor, and that Colonel McDonnell, his son, who distinguished himself in the Maori Wars, had to petition Parliament for employment, being in “pecuniary straits.” Lieutenant McDonnell had had in all nine children. Decline and Fall of McDonnell Lieutenant McDonnell was undoubtedly ruined as a result of the events of 1840. His magnificent dream of 400 square miles of ownership might never have been shattered but for the Wakefield system he so deplored. He was typical of most of the early pioneers who had money to invest, in sinking rather than in rising ii. the scale of wealth. He claimed to have rst directed the British Government’s attention to New Zealand. Though this is too large a claim, and thereby typical of the man, there is no doubt that his expert knowledge helped to develop New Zealand’., infant timber industry. At least he had played for high stakes and lived with gusto. He lost the game. The Maoris tore down his fences and his own stock invaded his vineyard and destroyed at the same time his fig trees and prickly pear trees. In this field, too, he had been

a pioneer, importing plants from Kew Gardens, and initiating agriculture in his corner of the North. Lieutenant Thomas McDonnell, with his decorative cannon and “his chiefs,” is a figure from whom we cannot withhold respectful affection.