The Enderby Settlement Read online

  For my dearest wife Jackie, to whom I dedicated my first boys’ adventure book some 60 years ago. Through all these years you have given me your own time and talent, support and encouragement. For this I give, in small return, my love and thanks.

  Published by Otago University Press

  P.O. Box 56 / Level 1, 398 Cumberland Street

  Dunedin, New Zealand

  [email protected]

  www.otago.ac.nz

  First published in 2014

  Text © 2014 Conon Fraser

  Photographs © the photographers as named.

  Where no photographer is credited, these photos are courtesy of the author

  The moral rights of the author and photographers have been asserted.

  ISBN 978-1-877578-59-5 (print)

  ISBN 978-0-947522-36-0 (Kindle Mobi)

  ISBN 978-0-947522-37-7 (EPUB)

  ISBN 978-0-947522-38-4 (ePDF)

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the

  National Library of New Zealand.

  This book is copyright. Except for the purpose of fair review, no part may be stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including recording or storage in any information retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

  Front cover: Detail from The Enderby Settlement in 1850, showing the peninsula dividing the two bays – Erebus Cove and Davis Bay (artist unknown). (Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ref. 18971 d. 65)

  Ebook conversion 2017 by meBooks

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One: Raw Beginnings

  Chapter Two: Whaling South

  Chapter Three: Settling In

  Chapter Four: Mackworth and Munce

  Chapter Five: Otago Interlude

  Chapter Six: Sir George Grey’s Visit

  Chapter Seven: Difficult Times

  Chapter Eight: Rumblings and Rumours

  Chapter Nine: Macquarie Island Episode

  Chapter Ten: The Special Commissioners

  Chapter Eleven: The Downs Crisis

  Chapter Twelve: Enderby Under Siege

  Chapter Thirteen: Rights and Wrongs of Passage

  Chapter Fourteen: A Hollow Victory

  Chapter Fifteen: End of the Dream

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  An aerial view of the Enderby Settlement site, from the Enderby Settlement Diaries. Note the coastal fringe of flowering rata.

  J. Kendrick

  Acknowledgements

  This account of the Enderby Settlement began as a chapter in my 1986 book on New Zealand’s subantarctic islands, Beyond the Roaring Forties. The book followed the National Film Unit production of the same title, which I directed. I spent several weeks on the Auckland Islands, working at all the locations of importance to the Enderby Settlement. I am grateful to the National Film Unit and the Department of Conservation for that wonderful assignment.

  In 1984 we went down as a small crew on the Acheron, skippered by the late Alex Black and his wife Colleen; and again in 1985 with accompanying scientists on HMNZS Monowai with its Wasp helicopter, piloted by Lt Cdr Dave Washer, which gave me the opportunity to take – and sometimes snatch! – aerial shots during trial runs for filming.

  Considerable research had already taken place, and a great deal more was to follow, most of it well before the huge advantage of the Internet. Of the many people who helped me, I must give special thanks to Paul Dingwall for his support and input, and to Chris Robertson, who put me on to Mackworth’s diary, in the first place, and then Munce’s diary. Both were generous in passing on information.

  In New Zealand, I would like to thank Jill Goodwin, Miranda Johnson and Diane Woods of the Alexander Turnbull Library and National Library; Kate de Courcy and Robert Eruera of the Auckland Libraries Sir George Grey Special Collections; Georgia Prince of the Auckland Libraries; David McDonald and Anne Jackman of the Hocken Library; Alistair Carlile of the Auckland War Memorial Museum; Baden Norris of the Canterbury Museum; Sandra Quinn of Taupo Library; National Archives Wellington; Gareth Winter of Wairarapa Archives; and Chris Edkins of DOC for originating the maps and Good Graphic Design for amending them. Also, Kay Beets, Richard Bruce, Wilford Davis, Des Downes, Barbara Enderby, Cdr Brett Fotheringham, Pauline Goodger, Sarah Howell, (the late) Hazel Lane, Wayne Marriott, Des Price, Rhys Richards, Ken Scadden, Rowley Taylor, Dr Murray Williams and Graeme Valpy.

  In Australia, I would like to thank Susan Mercer and Judy Nelson of the Mitchell Library, NSW; State Library of Tasmania Archives; and Janet Denne, Judy Tadman and (the late) Harold Munce. And in Canada, Madelene Allen. In Britain, I’d like to thank David Prior of the House of Lords Reference Library (now Parliamentary Archives, Houses of Parliament); Bob Headland of Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University; Dr Leedham-Green of Cambridge University Library; Jonathan Smith of Trinity College Cambridge; the Public Record Office, Kew (now National Archives) and Dr M.K. Banton; Dr Carol Jacobi and Edward Smith of Westminster School records; Christopher Allan of Ede & Ravenscroft; the Royal Geographical Society; Admiralty Library, Ministry of Defence; and the National Maritime Museum Greenwich; also John Enderby, Barbara Ludlow, Sir Digby Mackworth and Professor James Mackworth.

  Several of the above have died in the years since my researches first began and I am sad that they are not able to appreciate the results of their involvement.

  My grateful thanks go to my editor, Gillian Tewsley, whose work has been sympathetic, perceptive and thorough. I am indebted to Otago University Press former publisher Wendy Harrex, who took on this project, and her successor, Rachel Scott, who saw it through to completion. My thanks also go to the rest of the team at Otago University Press.

  Finally, special thanks to my wife Jackie for her careful and perceptive reading, encouragement and suggestions made over successive drafts.

  Conon Fraser

  Taupo

  Author’s Note

  A chance remark by Dr David Waite, while giving ornithologist C.J.R. Robertson of the Wildlife Service the required medical check before one of Christopher’s research trips to New Zealand’s subantarctic islands in 1974, was the beginning of my long involvement with the Enderby Settlement. Dr Waite happened to mention that an uncle of his, Des Downes, had come across an old diary written at the Enderby Settlement on the Auckland Islands, while he was clearing out the attic of a deceased aunt’s house. The diarist, William Mackworth, had married Juliet Valpy, Downes’ great-grandmother, and she had passed the diary down through the family after William’s early death.

  The existence of a second diary, by William Munce, was discovered in 1994 by Madelene Allen of Canada,1 great-granddaughter of Robert Holding, a survivor of the Invercauld, wrecked on the Auckland Islands in 1864. Following up on her early researches at the Mitchell Library in Sydney, Chris Robertson traced the original of the diary in 1998 through surviving relatives of William Munce to Winifred Davenport, Munce’s great-granddaughter. The two diaries were combined a year later as the Enderby Settlement Diaries (ESD); and I was involved with this project as a contributor and co-editor.

  For most of the time between the discovery of these two diaries, virtually nothing was known about William Mackworth himself, and disappointingly little about daily life at the settlement. I had to read between the lines to understand Mackworth’s occasional outbursts of loneliness and frustration. He did not even mention meeting and falling in love with Juliet during a business trip to Otago from the settlement, or that his cousin,
Digby Mackworth, on a visit from England, was with him at the time. We learn of such personal details from William Munce2 and Juliet’s sister.3

  The author filming a skua, with inquisitive sea lion (taken on Campbell Island in 1985). Bayly Watson

  In June 1996 I was in London in the search room of the Parliamentary Archives, looking through the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers4 and other material for details on the break-up of the Enderby Settlement, and happened to mention I was having trouble gleaning information on William Mackworth. I had thought he might have settled in Dunedin, but I had already discovered that there was not a single Mackworth in the entire New Zealand phone directory, which was surprising, as it had not struck me as a particularly unusual name. My helper went away without comment, and returned a few minutes later with copies of Debrett’s and Burke’s Peerage: an old Burke’s volume of 1856 with a full account of the Mackworth family lineage, and a later volume of 1959 recording one of Herbert Mackworth’s sons as ‘William Augustus [Mackworth], b. 3 March 1825; m. 22 Sept. 1852, Juliet Anne, dau. of Francis Valpy,5 of Dunedin, and d. 4 Dec. 1855.’ So at the time of the Enderby Settlement Mackworth was a young man of 25, half Enderby’s age. And he had married Juliet within six weeks of the break-up of the Enderby Settlement! This information led to the discovery of valuable references to William and Juliet in her sister Caroline’s unpublished memoirs.6

  Other lines of research led to correspondence with several of the settlers’ descendants, among them the late Pauline Goodger, who married the great-grandson of Thomas Goodger, the settlement’s storekeeper and Enderby’s valet. I began a correspondence with her after coming across a letter she had donated to the Canterbury Museum. The letter was from Charles Enderby to Tom’s wife Mary,7 and in it Enderby, after advising Mary to dissuade her son from serious gambling on horses, gave his somewhat spartan views on the cost that children put their parents to during their upbringing. This contact, like several others, led to valuable background information on several of the settlement’s families.

  It took time to disentangle the numerous letters, reports and repetitions of the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, in particular, and to marshal events as they unfolded, from the initial optimism with which plans were laid and Enderby’s three ships left England to set up his whaling colony, to the hopeful and challenging early days of the settlement, and Enderby’s determination and belief that setbacks could and would be overcome – a determination which became increasingly desperate and indefensible in the face of gathering doubts and concern back in London. Finally came the bitter clash of personalities and loyalties involving the colony and the company, which led to Enderby’s departure and the end of the venture and of his utopian dream in just under three years.

  The Enderby Settlement was notable as the smallest and most remote of British colonies. This must have caused the colonists some misgivings but also a certain pride as they set out from England, not knowing then that the settlement was also to prove the shortest-lived of all Britain’s colonies.

  Enderby’s flagship, the Samuel Enderby, 422 tons, leaving Cowes in the Isle of Wight, where it was built, in 1834.

  Artist: Huggins. Courtesy New Bedford Whaling Museum, Massachusetts

  CHAPTER ONE

  Raw Beginnings

  After an often stormy passage, the Samuel Enderby finally reached the remote subantarctic Auckland Islands, just over 300 kilometres south of New Zealand, on 2 December 1849. It took a further two days after first sighting the main island to make the comparative shelter of Port Ross.1

  The largest and finest of three ships which had left England three and a half months earlier, the Samuel Enderby carried Charles Enderby, the Lieutenant Governor and Chief Commissioner of this raw new British colony and whaling settlement, together with the first lot of settlers. They had understood the islands to be uninhabited,2 but as Thomas Younger, the colony’s civil engineer, recalled years later:

  When we got close in, to our astonishment we saw a boat coming off from the point opposite Ocean [Ewing] Island … There were in it three or four Maoris completely naked with the exception of a bit of sealskin around the loins. They were painted and had feathers in their hair. There was one woman. One of them came on board. We were still outside. We had a Maori sailor on board. He asked him to pilot us in. From that day he was called Pilot Jack. A savage looking Maori he was. The sailors first took him and dressed him in some of their clothes. He took charge and took the vessel right in. We anchored between Shoe Island and the settlement.3

  Enderby would have known that a small number of Maori and their Moriori slaves from the Chatham Islands were there from the reports of HMS Fly, which had visited the islands a year and two months previously, but not wishing to cause alarm, he had chosen to keep the information to himself.4 He felt the fact that Maori had been there for eight years and had no wish to be removed ‘speaks much in favour of the place’, and he believed that their presence could be mutually advantageous.5

  This page and following page: Location maps of the Auckland Islands.

  Enderby Settlement Diaries, p. xviii

  Although he knew the location chosen for his settlement would be in or close to its natural state, it was still a challenging sight. A narrow pebble beach gave straight onto the dense and twisted rata forest that grew on this leeward side of the island. Behind the wind-cropped trees a drab and almost impenetrable scrub rose to bare hills lost in mist and cloud – wild terrain that might have seemed familiar to someone from Yorkshire or the Scottish Highlands; but these were people from the gaslit city streets of London and the mild pastoral countryside of southern England. They had naively expected a coastal plain with green grass, complete with the pigs, poultry, vegetables and gooseberry bushes introduced by Sir James Clarke Ross’s British Antarctic Expedition several years before. Instead, almost everything was new: the absence of any sort of clearing; the sea lions that accompanied the boats as they made their way from the ships to the land; the gnarled rata trees; and the tattooed, half-naked New Zealand Maori. It was all very daunting. They realised they would have to live aboard the ships while a clearing was made for the prefabricated cottages and buildings that were still in crates in the ships’ holds.

  When they landed on the shelving beach, Charles Enderby delivered, as Lieutenant Governor, ‘a suitable address to those under his command.’6 In the following days, as land was laboriously cleared, he had meetings with the two principal Maori chiefs: Matioro, whose pa was in the throes of being moved from Enderby Island to just north of the settlement; and Ngatere, whose pa was at Ocean Point, facing Ocean Island7 – the pa from which Pilot Jack’s canoe had come out to guide in the Samuel Enderby. With some difficulty Enderby made the position clear to the chiefs, explaining that Abraham Bristow had returned the year after his discovery to take possession of the Auckland Islands for Britain back in 1807; and that the islands now belonged to the Southern Whale Fishery Company by Royal Charter from the Crown. The Maori would be compensated for their relinquishment of land and any claim to it, and would be allowed to continue their harvesting and growing of crops. Employment would be available to them, and they would be able to purchase clothing and provisions at the Company’s store. Enderby later noted: ‘I have found them strictly honest and willing, and also able boatmen, whilst some of them have [already] been engaged in the Whale Fishery.’8

  On 14 December the Brisk, the second of the three ships which had set sail together, arrived under the command of Captain Thomas Tapsell. The ship’s first officer was George Cook, whose mother was ‘a native of New Zealand’ from the Bay of Islands. Cook spoke fluent Maori, and was able to explain to the chiefs the terms of an agreement along the lines of Enderby’s earlier discussions with them, before the document was ‘regularly drawn up and signed’.9 Not that Cook’s services were always needed: most Maori chiefs of the time spoke passable and often excellent English, while Matioro’s people became colloquial enough to refer to the Governor as ‘the old cock�
��!10 The Europeans, or Pakeha, on the other hand, had virtually no knowledge of the Maori language: they had considerable difficulty over the pronounciation and spelling of names, and of Ngatere’s in particular, calling him variously Nannaterri and Etteri; however, Matioro and Ngatere seem the most accurate.11

  Charles Enderby, about 1860.

  Royal Geographical Society, London, PR/026545

  Although only a quarter the size of Carnley Harbour – or the Southern Harbour as it was referred to by the Enderby settlers – Port Ross had been the harbour favoured by the three Antarctic expeditions of 1840: Ross’s, Charles Wilkes’s United States Exploring Expedition, and the French naval expedition under Dumont d’Urville. It would also be used later by the German expedition of 1874–75, which was based at Terror Cove to make observations of the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. Port Ross had excellent anchorages, and offered a more favourable approach from the west than the Southern Harbour with its treacherous Victoria Passage.

  The two ships of d’Urville’s Antarctic expedition anchored by Shoe Island in Port Ross, March 1840.

  Louis le Breton. Alexander Turnbull Library, Ref B.052.014

  Bristow had named the harbour Sarah’s Bosom after the Sarah, in which he had returned a year after his discovery of the Auckland Islands to claim them for Britain. Ocean Island, well within the protection of the harbour, was named after Bristow’s whaling ship Ocean, in which he first came across the islands in 1806; while beautiful little Rose Island west of Enderby Island is named after Bristow’s sister Sarah Rose.12

  Port Ross, like Carnley Harbour, is part of an ancient volcano, and can be recognised as such by outcrops of basaltic columnar rock on Enderby Island, Dea’s Head and at other points. It has the shape of a narrowing funnel, widest at its seaward end to the northeast, where it is sheltered from the ocean by Enderby Island, the group’s third largest, and by Rose and Ewing islands.