BAY OF ISLANDS

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 15, 31 July 1944, Page 3

BAY OF ISLANDS

NEW ZEALAND TO-DAY

From the launch which runs round from the railhead at Opua there doesn’t seem to be much about Russell to distinguish ’it from other New Zealand seaside towns of comparable size. At the foot of hills, on which manuka and gorse grow freely, houses and shops, parallel with the line of the foreshore, press forward toward the sea. A single narrow jetty, with a launch and perhaps a scow from Auckland lying alongside, projects from somewhere near the middle of the line of buildings. Half a dozen more launches are anchored in the Bay ; and here and there along the beach, above high-water mark, small craft lie on their sides or upside down. Hills, houses, launches, dinghies, the jetty, and the curving foreshorein its general outline certainly not an unfamiliar scene. And when you -go ashore you find, too, that in much of

its detail Russell conforms to type. Crowding about the wharf there is just the usual collection of shops and public amenities, including, of course, though only once a week, the movies. If, at this time of the year, you walk along the foreshore—the Strand, according to a notice by the wharf — quite likely that the only things you’ll see will be two or three cows cropping the grass beneath the young pohutukawa trees. Turn and walk back along the next street running parallel with the Strand and perhaps the substitutes for the cows are a dozen ducks in a wet paddock. But, remember, this is not the tourist season, and there are petrol and travel restrictions, too. In any peacetime summer the story is very different. Then you can see in Russell’s streets travellers from all over the world, many of them deep-sea

fishermen completing arrangements for their camps farther down the Bay. You are reminded of that by a notice on one of the buildings “ Bay of Islands Swordfish and Mako Shark Club.” And, of course, for most New-Zealanders, swordfish and sharks inevitably recall the name of the American novelist Zane Grey, who did much to make the Bay of Islands known as a big-game fishing-ground. His camp at Otehei is one of the places you see if you take a trip in the launch that delivers supplies to the settlers down the Bay each week.

Some big fish have been caught from the Bay of Islands camps, among them half a dozen of various sorts which were, up to 1939 at any rate, according to published figures, claimed as world records for weight. A list of the heaviest fish caught off the Bay up to the same year sounds impressive : striped marlin, 450 lb. ; black marlin, 976 lb. ; mako shark, 800 lb. ; thresher shark, 992 lb. ; kingfish, 115 lb. ; snapper, 25 lb. ; turtle, 1,062 1b..; sun-

fish, 803 lb.; hammerhead shark, 800 lb. ; and broadbill swordfish, 673 lb. Sharks and swordfish have brought fame to the modern Russell. Well over a century ago it was whalers and whaleships that brought not fame but notoriety to the old Russell. Kororareka, which was the name early

Russell went by, was the first town in New Zealand. As such it had a brief day of importance as ” the first capital of the new colony. But it was destroyed in a war with the Maoris in 1845 ; and in the modern township of Russell only two of the early

buildings remain. They are the English church, built in 1835, and the house of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Oceania, Bishop - Pompallier. The real founder of the European settlement at Kororareka was, as one writer has remarked, a man whose name should not be inscribed on his country’s roll of honour. He was Benjamin Turner, an ex-convict who worked as a sawyer. He bought a small section on the waterfront and there, “ with a shrewd eye for the profits to be made out of human weakness, he built a grogshop. It was an instant success. And New Zealand’s first town was born.”

Captain Cook sailed into the Bay of Islands in 1769. Within forty years of that date whalers were putting into the Bay in considerable numbers. They continued to do so up to the “ eighteen forties.” It was almost solely with them that the business of the white dealers and Maori barterers at Kororareka lay. More than twenty whaleships were sometimes anchored off the beach at one

time, and in one year 120 of them sailed in and out of Kororareka. It’s hardly surprising that by 1838 Benjamin Turner had a lot of competition. Innumerable grog-shops had sprung up, there were five pubs, a theatre, gambling hells, and skittle alleys. And the chance of getting a cracked head from a flying bottle was perhaps the least risk a man took when he walked down the track that served as the main street. The Rev. Henry Williams, from the mission station at Paihia, across the Bay, was often called in to settle arguments and put things right with the outraged natives. At one time, too, some of the less lawless of the settlers formed a Kororareka Association to dispense rough and ready justice in the form of fines, tarring and feathering, and beating up. But it wasn’t until the arrival of Governor Hobson that law and order finally came to this lawless town. It was the skipper of a ship which lay off Kororareka who caused the Maori war in 1830, known in history as the “ Girls’ War.” This skipper, whose name was Brind, took a couple of Maori girls as his wives. And when he tired of them he took two more. The discarded wives picked a quarrel with the captain’s new favourites ; insults and curses were exchanged, and very soon war began on the Kororareka Beach. In spite of the strenuous efforts of the missionaries, among them Samuel Marsden, who happened to arrive in the Bay just after the war began, the fighting spread from Kororareka to the south, where it continued fitfully over some seventeen

months. It has been said that : “In the history of New Zealand there is no episode to be compared with this when four native girls of high birth and ignorant of the western idea of unmarried chastity, having fallen out and cursed each other for the love of a man of another race, embroiled a whole countryside in a war which cost many lives.’’ Captain Hobson, in H.M.S. “ Herald,” arrived in the Bay of Islands on January 29, 1840, and it was in the little Anglican Church at Kororareka that he read to the assembled populace on the following day the Proclamation disclosing the reason for his presence in New Zealand. The British Government had intended, apparently, that Hobson should land in New Zealand as consul in succession to James Busby, the British Resident, and negotiate by treaty with the native chiefs for the cession of their sovereignty to the Queen, proclaiming himself Lieutenant-Governor oyer territory as

it was ceded. What he did, however, was to proclaim himself LieutenantGovernor in a country where he did not then control an inch of territory. The treaty which would give him the right to proclaim himself LieutenantGovernor was submitted to the native chiefs on February 5 on the natural lawn in front of Busby’s house at Waitangi, directly opposite Kororareka, and signed there by more than forty chiefs on the following day. Busby’s house was a large and commodious one, built largely of Australian hardwood.

It stood, and still stands, now more than one hundred years old, on a promontory which slopes gently toward the sea. To the right of it is the Waitangi River, on the bank of which, the Maoris who had assembled to hear the Treaty read, camped among the cabbage-palms. At the foot of scrub-clad hills, a mile or so away across the river, was the mission station of Paihia, where Missionary Colenso was printing the copies of the New Testament on the first printingpress in New Zealand. And away on the other side, to the left, was Rangihoua Bay, where a cross now marks the spot where Samuel Marsden, on Christmas Day, 1814, preached the first Christian sermon to the Maoris. By the Treaty of Waitangi the Maori signatories ceded all their “ rights and powers of sovereignty ” to Britain, and Britain guaranteed to the Maoris, “ the full, exclusive, and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisheries, and other properties—so long as it is their wish and desire to retain the same in their possession. But the chiefs of the United tribes, and the individual chiefs, yield to Her Majesty the exclusive right of pre-emption over such lands as the proprietors thereof may be disposed to alienate, at such prices as may be agreed upon between the respective proprietors and persons appointed by Her Majesty to treat with them on that behalf.” The Treaty also extended to the natives the protection of Britain and all the rightsand privileges of British subjects.

It was discussed with the Maoris and signed in a large marquee which the sailors from the “ Herald ” erected in front of Busby’s house. At one end was a raised platform on which were seats and a table covered with a large Union Jack, and the sides were decorated with a liberal display of the “ Herald’s ” bunting. In this marquee, the site of which is marked by a flagstaff to-day, ended and began significant chapters in this country’s-history. The period of the moral administration of the missionaries ended, and with the establishment of British sovereignty New Zealand began its ascent to nationhood. - In 1932 Lord Bledisloe, GovernorGeneral of New Zealand, and Lady Bledisloe, bought the Treaty House,

together with 1,000 acres of O& land from the estate of which it formed part, and presented it to the country. The house . has been restored and is to-day the national menument to the historic events which took place in its garden. The first man to sign the treaty of Waitangi was the Ngapuhi Hone Heke, and it was the same proud Hone Heke’s men who cut down the flagstaff at Kororareka on July 8, 1844. Before the British flag was hoisted in the Bay of Islands, Heke and his cousin Titore divided a levy of £5 on each ship entering the Bay ; but with the imposition of Customs duties there and the moving of the capital to Auckland in 1842 trade declined, and blankets, tobacco, and spirits became dearer. There was, in addition, a vague, but widely diffused belief among the Maoris that the Treaty of Waitangi wasn’t all it pretended to be. But just how much all this, and other reasons which have been advanced, had to do with the cutting-down of the flagstaff,, it’s hard to say now. The flagstaff was re-erected ; and cut down again on January 10, 1845. Up it went again, and on January 19 it was down for the third time. The Governor (now Fitzroy) appealed to the Governor of New South Wales for military assistance, but before the troops arrived the flagstaff was down for the fourth

time, and Kororareka Town was in ashes. After some preliminary skirmishes against white settlers in the bays about Kororareka, the Maoris launched their fourth attack against the flagstaff on Maiki Hill in the early morning of March n, 1845. A blockhouse had been built around the flagstaff’s base ; but when they heard firing in the town below all except four of the garrison stationed in it went outside, some to see what was going on and the rest to prepare for battle. The Maoris cut them off from the blockhouse, killed the four men inside, and, in spite of the iron sheathing which had been put round it, brought the flagstaff tumbling down. Their main objective had been achieved. But meanwhile another battle was being fought in the town below. Forty-five bluejackets and marines from H.M.S. “ Hazard,” which had arrived from Wellington on February 15, were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with about two hundred Maoris round the fence of the English church. The regular garrison, consisting of about fifty rank and file of the 96th Regiment from Auckland, and about one hundred armed civilians, were soon into the fray. And the fighting went on all morning. About midday the women and children were taken off to ships in the bay. Then an accident occurred which decided the fate of Kororareka. Some careless fellow smoked his pipe as he worked among the bags of gunpowder in the magazine. A spark dropped, and the whole of the reserve ammunition in store went up in smoke. Lieutenant Philpotts, of the “ Hazard,” the senior combatant officer, after consultation with Mr. Beckham, the Magistrate, decided on complete evacuation ; and the day ended with the

“ Hazard ” pumping occasional shots into the town as the Maoris drank grog and seized blankets, clothes, tobacco, food, and everything else they could lay their hands on. The looting went on the next day ; then the Maoris fired the buildings, all except the English and Roman Catholic churches and mission houses. When, early on the following morning, a fleet of five ships sailed oft with the refugees for Auckland, a cloud of smoke and a pile of ashes was practically all that remained of the £50,000 worth of property that had been the town of Kororareka. Out of those ashes has grown Russell, the bland little tourist and fishing resort with a more exciting history behind it than any other town in New Zealand. The English church, still bearing the mark of a round shot from the “ Hazard,” and Bishop Pompallier’s house stand alone among the modern buildings as reminders of Kororareka. In the grave-

yard round the church is a stone to Tamati Waaka Nene, a northern Maori chief who was a consistent friend of the early pakehas. Another stone marks the grave of the first white female child born in New Zealand, and still another, inscribed in English and Maori, reminds the visitor that beneath this turf are the graves. of pioneer residents, pakeha and Maori, many of whom died in the defence of Kororareka.” On a stone to six men of the “ Hazard ” there are these verses : — The warlike of the isles The men of field and wave ! Are not the rocks their funeral piles The seas and shores their grave ? Go, stranger I track the deep, Free, free, the white sails spread ! Wave may not foam, nor wild wind sweep Where rest not England’s dead. To the right of the town another flagstaff stands on Maiki hill. .