MISSION SCHOONER AND WHALE BOAT
"Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy."--_Text of Samuel
Marsden's first sermon at the Bay of Islands, Christmas Day_, 1814.
Maoris, shipping before the mast on board whalers and traders, made
some of the best seamen on the Pacific. They visited Sydney and
other civilized ports, where their fine physique, bold bearing, and
strangely tattooed faces, heightened the interest felt in them as
specimens of their ferocious and dreaded race. Stories of the Maoris
went far and wide--of their fierce fights, their cannibal orgies,
their grotesque ornaments and customs, their lonely, fertile, and
little-known country. Humane men conceived the wish to civilize and
Christianize this people. Benjamin Franklin had planned something of
the kind when the news of Cook's discovery first reached England.
Thirty years later, Samuel Marsden, a New South Wales chaplain,
resolved to be the Gregory or Augustine of this Britain of the South.
The wish became the master-passion of his life, and he lived to fulfil
it. How this resolve was carried out makes one of the pleasantest
pages of New Zealand history. The first step was his rescue of
Ruatara. In 1809 a roaming Maori sailor had worked his passage to
London, in the hope of seeing the great city and--greatest sight of
all--King George III. The sailor was Ruatara, a Bay of Islands chief.
Adventurous and inquiring as he was intelligent and good-natured,
Ruatara spent nearly nine years of his life away from his native land.
At London his captain refused to pay him his wages or to help him to
see King George, and solitary, defrauded, and disappointed, the young
wanderer fell sick nigh unto death. All the captain would do for him
was to transfer him to the _Ann_, a convict ship bound for Sydney.
Fortunately Marsden was among her passengers. The chaplain's heart
was touched at the sight of the wan, wasted Maori sitting dull-eyed,
wrapped in his blanket, coughing and spitting blood. His kindness
drew back Ruatara from the grave's brink and made him a grateful and
attached pupil. Together they talked of the savage islands, which one
longed to see and the other to regain. Nor did their friendship end
with the voyage. More adventures and disappointments awaited Ruatara
before he at last reached home. Once in a whale ship he actually
sighted the well-beloved headlands of the Bay of Islands, and brought
up all his goods and precious presents ready to go on shore. But the
sulky captain broke his promise and sailed past the Bay. Why trouble
to land a Maori? Ruatara had to choose between landing at Norfolk
Island or another voyage to England. Cheated of his earnings and
half-drowned in the surf, he struggled ashore on the convict island,
whence he made his way to Sydney and to Marsden's kindly roof. The
whaling captain went on towards England. But Justice caught him on the
way. He and his ship were taken by an American privateer.
Ruatara gained his home at the next attempt. There he laboured to
civilize his countrymen, planted and harvested wheat, and kept in
touch with Marsden across the Tasman Sea. Meanwhile the latter's
official superiors discountenanced his venturesome New Zealand
project. It was not until 1814 that the Governor of New South Wales at
last gave way to the chaplain's persistent enthusiasm, and allowed him
to send the brig _Active_ to the Bay of Islands with Messrs. Hall and
Kendall, lay missionaries, as the advance party of an experimental
mission station. Ruatara received them with open arms, and they
returned to Sydney after a peaceful visit, bringing with them not only
their enthusiastic host, but two other chiefs--Koro Koro and Hongi,
the last-named fated to become the scourge and destroyer of his race.
At last Marsden was permitted to sail to New Zealand. With Kendall,
Hall, and King, the three friendly chiefs, and some "assigned"
convict servants, he reached New Zealand in December, 1814. With
characteristic courage he landed at Whangaroa, among the tribe who had
massacred the crew of the unhappy _Boyd_. Going on shore there, he met
the notorious George, who stood to greet the strangers, surrounded by
a circle of seated tribesmen, whose spears were erect in the ground.
But George, despite a swaggering and offensive manner, seems to have
been amicable enough. He rubbed noses with Hongi and Ruatara, and
shook hands with Marsden, who passed on unharmed to the Bay of
Islands. There, by Ruatara's good offices, he was enabled to preach
to the assembled natives on the Sunday after arrival, being Christmas
Day, from the text printed at the head of this chapter. The Maoris
heard him quietly. Koro Koro walked up and down among the rows of
listeners keeping order with his chief's staff. When the service
ended, the congregation danced a war dance as a mark of attention to
the strangers.
Marsden settled his missionaries at Rangihu, where for twelve axes he
bought two hundred acres of land from a young _rangatira_ named Turi.
The land was conveyed to the Church Missionary Society by a deed of
sale. As Turi could not write, Hongi made the ingenious suggestion
that his _moko_, or face-tattoo, should be copied on the deed. This
was done by a native artist. The document began as follows:
"Know all men to whom these presents shall come, That I, Ahoodee O
Gunna, King of Rangee Hoo, in the Island of New Zealand, have, in
consideration of twelve axes to me in hand now paid by the Rev. Samuel
Marsden, of Paramatta, in the territory of New South Wales, given,
granted, bargained and sold, and by this present instrument do give,
grant, bargain and sell," etc., etc.
The deed is not only the first New Zealand conveyance, but has an
interest beyond that. It is evidence that, at any rate in 1815, a
single Maori, a chief, but of inferior rank, could sell a piece of
land without the specific concurrence of his fellow-tribesmen, or of
the tribe's head chief. Five and forty years later a somewhat similar
sale plunged New Zealand into long years of war.
After this Marsden returned to Sydney. The _Active_ took back spars
and dressed flax to the value of £450. The flax was sold at £110 a
ton. Kauri timber brought half a crown a foot, and the duty charged on
it at the Sydney customs house was a shilling a foot. The day of Free
Trade there was not yet. One cloud was hanging over the mission when
Marsden sailed. Ruatara lay dying. He had been seized with a fever,
and the natives, believing him to be attacked by a devouring demon,
placed him under _tapu_, and kept food, medicine, and his white
friends from him. When Marsden, by threatening to bombard the village
obtained access to the sick man, it was too late; he found his friend
past hope. Thus was the life of this staunch ally--a life which might
have been of the first value to the Maori race--thrown away. Though
the missionary's friend, Ruatara died a heathen, and his head wife
hung herself in customary Maori form.
Such was the setting up of the first mission station. Its founders
were sterling men. Kendall had been a London schoolmaster in good
circumstances. King, a master carpenter, had given up £400 a year to
labour among the savages. Marsden, though he made seven more voyages
to the country, the last after he had reached threescore years and
ten, never settled there. Henry Williams, however, coming on the
scene in 1823, became his chief lieutenant. Williams had been a naval
officer, had fought at Copenhagen, and had in him the stuff of which
Nelson's sailors were made. Wesleyan missionaries, following in the
footsteps of Marsden's pioneers, established themselves in 1822, and
chose for the place of their labours the scene of the _Boyd_ disaster.
Roman Catholic activity began in 1838.
It took ten years to make one convert, and up to 1830 the baptisms
were very few. After that the work began to tell and the patient
labourers to reap their harvest. By 1838 a fourth of the natives
had been baptized. But this was far from representing the whole
achievement of the missionaries. Many thousands who never formally
became Christians felt their influence, marked their example, profited
by their schools. They fought against war, discredited cannibalism,
abolished slavery. From the first Marsden had a sound belief in the
uses of trade and of teaching savages the decencies and handicrafts
of civilized life. He looked upon such knowledge as the best path to
religious belief. Almost alone amongst his class, he was far-sighted
enough to perceive, at any rate in the latter years of his life, that
the only hope of New Zealand lay in annexation, and that any dream
of a Protestant Paraguay was Utopian. Quite naturally, but most
unfortunately, most missionaries thought otherwise, and were at the
outset of colonization placed in antagonism to the pioneers. Meanwhile
they taught the elements of a rough-and-ready civilization, which the
chiefs were acute enough to value. But the courage and singleness of
purpose of many of them gave them a higher claim to respect. To do the
Maoris justice, they recognised it, and the long journeys which the
preachers of peace were able to make from tribe to tribe of cannibals
and warriors say something for the generosity of the latter as well as
for the devotion of the travellers. For fifty years after Marsden's
landing no white missionary lost his life by Maori hands. Almost
every less serious injury had to be endured. In the face of hardship,
insult, and plunder, the work went on. A schooner, the _Herald_, was
built in the Bay of Islands to act as messenger and carrier between
the missionary stations, which--pleasant oases in the desert of
barbarism--began to dot the North Island from Whangaroa as far south
as Rotorua among the Hot Lakes. By 1838 there were thirteen of them.
The ruins of some are still to be seen, surrounded by straggling plots
run to waste, "where once a garden smiled." When Charles Darwin,
during the voyage of the _Beagle_, visited the Bay of Islands, the
missionary station at Waimate struck him as the one bright spot in
a gloomy and ill-ordered land. Darwin, by the way, was singularly
despondent in his estimate both of Australia and New Zealand. Colonial
evolution was clearly not amongst his studies.
[Illustration: CARVED GATEWAY OF MAORI VILLAGE
_From a Sketch by_ GENERAL ROBLEY.]
Colonists as a rule shrug their shoulders when questioned as to the
depth of Maori religious feeling. It is enough to point out that a
Christianity which induced barbarian masters to release their slaves
without payment or condition must have had a reality in it at which
the kindred of Anglo-Saxon sugar-planters have no right to sneer. Odd
were the absurdities of Maori lay preachers, and knavery was
sometimes added to absurdity. Yet these dark-skinned teachers carried
Christianity into a hundred nooks and corners. Most of them were
honest enthusiasts. Two faced certain death in the endeavour to carry
the Gospel to the Taupo heathen, and met their fate with cheerful
courage. Comic as Maori sectarianism became, it was not more
ridiculous than British. It is true that rival tribes gloried in
belonging to different denominations, and in slighting converts
belonging to other churches. On one occasion, a white wayfarer, when
asking shelter for the night at a _pa_, was gravely asked to name his
church. He recognised that his night's shelter was at stake, and had
no notion what was the reigning sect of the village. Sharpened by
hunger, his wit was equal to the emergency, and his answer, "the true
church," gained him supper and a bed. Too much stress has been laid on
the spectacle of missionaries engaging in public controversies, and
of semi-savage converts wrangling over rites and ceremonies and
discussing points of theology which might well puzzle a Greek
metaphysician. Such incidents were but an efflorescence on the surface
of what for a number of years was a true and general earnestness.
The missionaries, aided by Professor Lee, of Cambridge, gave the Maori
a written language. Into this the Scriptures were translated, chiefly
by William Williams, who became Bishop of Waiapu, and by Archdeacon
Maunsell. Many years of toil went to the work, and it was not
completed until 1853. In 1834 a printing press was set up by the
Church Mission Society at the Bay of Islands, in charge of Mr. William
Colenso. Neither few nor small were the difficulties which beset this
missionary printer. At the outset he got his press successfully from
ship to shore by lashing two canoes together and laying planks across
them. Though the chiefs surveyed the type with greedy eyes and hinted
that it would make good musket-balls, they did not carry it off. But
on unpacking his equipment Colenso found he had not been supplied
with an inking-table, composing-sticks, leads, galleys, cases,
imposing-stone, or printing-paper. A clever catechist made him an
imposing-stone out of two boulders of basalt found in a river-bed hard
by. Leads he contrived by pasting bits of paper together, and with the
help of various make-shifts, printed on February 21, 1835 the first
tract published in New Zealand. It consisted of the Epistles to the
Ephesians and Philippians in Maori, printed on sixteen pages of
writing-paper and issued in wrappers of pink blotting-paper. Much the
most capable helpers whom the lonely printer had in his first years
were two one-time compositors who had turned sailors and who, tiring
of foc'sle life under Yankee captains, made up their minds to resume
the stick and apron in the cannibal islands. Impish Maori boys made
not inappropriate "devils." With such assistants Colenso, working
on, had by New Year's Day, 1838, completed the New Testament and was
distributing bound copies to the eager Maoris, who sent messengers for
them from far and near. Pigs, potatoes, flax were offered for copies
of the precious volume, in one case even that rarest of curiosities in
No Man's Land--a golden sovereign.
Not the least debt, which any one having to do with New Zealand owes
the missionaries and Professor Lee, is a scholarly method of writing
Maori. In their hands the spelling of the language became simple,
systematic, and pleasant to the eye. What it has done to save the
names of the country's places and persons from taking fantastic and
ridiculous shapes, a few examples will show. For sixty years after
Cook's discovery every traveller spelt these names as seemed good to
him. The books of the time offer us such things of beauty as Muckeytoo
(Maketu), Kiddy-Kiddy (Keri-Keri), Wye-mattee (Waimate), Keggerigoo
(Kekerangu), Boo Marray and Bowmurry (Pomaré), Shunghee and E'Ongi
(Hongi), Corroradickee (Kororáreka). The haven of Hokianga figures
alternately as Showkianga, Sukyanna, Jokeeangar and Chokahanga. Almost
more laughable are Towackey (Tawhaki), Wycaddie (Waikare), Crackee
(Karakia), Wedder-Wedder (Wera-Wera), and Rawmatty (Raumati).
These, however, are thrown into the shade by some of the courageous
attempts of the two Forsters, Cook's naturalists, at the names of
native birds. It must have taken some imaginative power to turn
pi-waka-waka into "diggowaghwagh," and kereru into "haggarreroo,"
but they achieved these triumphs. Their _chef-d'oeuvre_ is perhaps
"pooadugghiedugghie," which is their version of putangi-tangi, the
paradise-duck. After that it is not so easy to smile at the first
sentences of an official statement drawn up by Governor King, of New
South Wales, relative to the carrying off to Norfolk Island of the two
New Zealanders before mentioned, which begins:
"Hoodoo-Cockoty-Towamahowey is about twenty-four years
of age, five feet eight inches high, of an athletic make, and very
interesting. He is of the district of Teerawittee ... Toogee
Teterrenue Warripedo is of the same age as Hoodoo, but about
three inches shorter."
Poor Huru, poor Tuki!
While the missionaries were slowly winning their way through respect
to influence in the northern quarter of the country, and were giving
the Maori a written language and the Bible, very different agents were
working for civilization further south. From the last decade of
the eighteenth century onwards the islands were often sought by
whaling-ships. Gradually these came in greater numbers, and, until
about the year 1845, were constantly to be seen in and about certain
harbours--notably the Bay of Islands. But not by the utmost stretch of
charity could their crews be called civilizing agencies. To another
class of whalers, however, that title may not unfairly be given. These
were the men who settled at various points on the coast, chiefly from
Cook's Straits southward to Foveaux Straits, and engaged in what
is known as shore-whaling. In schooners, or in their fast-sailing,
seaworthy whale boats, they put out from land in chase of the whales
which for so many years frequented the New Zealand shores in shoals.
Remarkable were some of the catches they made. At Jacob's River eleven
whales were once taken in seventeen days. For a generation this
shore-whaling was a regular and very profitable industry. Only the
senseless slaughter of the "cows" and their "calves" ruined it.
Carried on at first independently by little bands of adventurers, it
in time fell into the hands of Sydney merchants, who found the capital
and controlled and organized whaling-stations. At these they erected
boiling-down works, shears for hoisting the huge whales' carcasses out
of the water, stores, and jetties. As late as 1843 men were busy at
more than thirty of these stations. More than five hundred men were
employed, and the oil and whalebone they sent away in the year were
worth at least £50,000. Sometimes the profits were considerable. A
certain merchant, who bought the plant of a bankrupt station for £225
at a Sydney auction, took away therefrom £1,500 worth of oil in the
next season. But then he was an uncommon merchant. He had been a
sealer himself, and finally abandoned mercantile life in Sydney to
return to his old haunts, where he managed his own establishment,
joined farming to whaling, endowed a mission station,[1] and amazed
the land by importing a black-coated tutor and a piano for his
children. Moreover, the harpooners and oarsmen were not paid wages or
paid in cash, but merely had a percentage of the value of a catch, and
were given that chiefly in goods and rum. For this their employers
charged them, perhaps, five times the prices current in Sydney, and
Sydney prices in convict times were not low. Under this truck system
the employers made profits both ways. The so-called rum was often
inferior arrack--deadliest of spirits--with which the Sydney of those
days poisoned the Pacific. The men usually began each season with a
debauch and ended it with another. A cask's head would be knocked out
on the beach, and all invited to dip a can into the liquor. They were
commonly in debt and occasionally in delirium. Yet they deserved to
work under a better system, for they were often fine fellows, daring,
active, and skilful. Theirs was no fair-weather trade. Their working
season was in the winter. Sharp winds and rough seas had to be faced,
and when these were contrary it required no small strength to pull
their heavy boats against them hour after hour, and mile after mile,
to say nothing of the management of the cumbrous steering-oar,
twenty-seven feet in length, to handle which the steersman had to
stand upright in the stern sheets.
[Footnote 1: John Jones, of Waikouaiti. His first missionary found
two years at a whaling-station quite enough, if we may judge from his
greeting to his successor, which was "Welcome to Purgatory, Brother
Creed!" Brother Creed's response is not recorded.]
The harpooning and lancing of the whale were wild work; and when bones
were broken, a surgeon's aid was not always to be had. The life,
however, could give change, excitement, the chance of profit, and long
intervals of comparative freedom. To share these, seamen deserted
their vessels, and free Australians--nicknamed currency lads--would
ship at Sydney for New Zealand. Ex-convicts, of course, swelled their
ranks, and were not always and altogether bad, despite the convict
system. The discipline in the boats was as strict as on a man-of-war.
On shore, when "trying down" the blubber, the men had to work long and
hard. "Sunday don't come into this bay!" was the gruff answer once
given to a traveller who asked whether the Sabbath was kept. Otherwise
they might lead easy lives. Each had his hut and his Maori wife, to
whom he was sometimes legally married. Many had gardens, and families
of half-caste children, whose strength and beauty were noted by all
who saw them. The whaler's helpmate had to keep herself and children
clean, and the home tidy. Cleanliness and neatness were insisted on
by her master, partly through the seaman's instinct for tidiness and
partly out of a pride and desire to show a contrast to the reeking
hovels of the Maori. As a rule she did her best to keep her man sober.
Her cottage, thatched with reeds, was perhaps whitewashed with lime
made by burning the sea-shells. With its clay floor and huge open
fireplace, with its walls lined with curtained sleeping bunks, and its
rafters loaded with harpoons, sharp oval-headed lances, coils of
rope, flitches of bacon or bags of flour, it showed a picture of rude
comfort.[1]
[Footnote 1: Wakefield, _Adventures in New Zealand_; Shortland,
_Southern Districts of New Zealand_; S. Thomson, _Story of New
Zealand_: Sir W.T. Power, _Sketches in New Zealand_; G.F. Angas,
_Savage Scenes_.]
If the seats were the joints of a whale's backbone, there was always
food in plenty, washed down with grog or tea made from manuka sprigs.
Whale's heart was a delicacy set before guests, who found it rather
like beef. Maoris, sharks, and clouds of sea-gulls shared much of the
flesh of the captured whales' carcasses.
Maori relatives learned to envy and, to some extent, to copy what they
saw. They took service as oarsmen, and even bought and equipped boats
for themselves. They learned to be ashamed of some of their more
odious habits, and to respect the pluck and sense of fair play shown
by their whaling neighbours. As a rule, each station was held by
license from the chief of the proprietary tribe. He and tenants would
stand shoulder to shoulder to resist incursions by other natives.
Dicky Barrett, head-man of the Taranaki whaling-station, helped
the Ngatiawa to repulse a noteworthy raid by the Waikato tribe.
Afterwards, when the Ngatiawa decided to abandon their much-harried
land, Barrett moved with them to Cook's Straits, where, in 1839, the
Wakefields found him looking jovial, round, and ruddy, dressed in a
straw hat, white jacket, and blue dungaree trousers, and married to a
chief's daughter--a handsome and stately woman. It was Dicky Barrett
who directed Colonel Wakefield to what is now Wellington, and who,
in consequence, may be recorded as the guide who pointed out to the
pioneer of the New Zealand Company the future capital of the colony.
Nor was Barrett the only specimen of this rough race whom New
Zealanders may remember with interest. There was Stewart, ex-Jacobite,
sealer, and pilot, whose name still conceals Rakiura, and whose
Highland pride made him wear the royal tartan to the last as he sat
in Maori villages smoking among the blanketed savages. There was the
half-caste Chaseland, whose mother was an Australian "gin," and who
was acknowledged to be the most dexterous and best-tempered steersman
in New Zealand--when sober. He needed his skill when he steered an
open boat from the Chathams to Otago across five hundred miles of
wind-vexed sea. Chaseland's mighty thews and sinews were rivalled by
those of Spencer, whose claim to have fought at Waterloo was regarded
as doubtful, but whose possession of two wives and of much money made
by rum-selling was not doubtful. Another notable steersman was Black
Murray, who once made his boatmen row across Cook's Straits at night
and in a gale because they were drunk, and only by making them put out
to sea could he prevent them from becoming more drunk. A congener of
his, Evans--"Old Man Evans"--boasted of a boat which was as spick and
span as a post-captain's gig, and of a crew who wore uniform. Nor must
the best of Maori whalers be forgotten--the chief Tuhawaiki--brave in
war, shrewd and businesslike in peace, who could sail a schooner as
cleverly as any white skipper, and who has been most unfairly damned
to everlasting fame--local fame--by his whaler's nickname of "Bloody
Jack!" These, and the "hands" whom they ordered about, knocked down,
caroused with, and steered, were the men who, between 1810 and 1845,
taught the outside world to take its way along the hitherto dreaded
shores of New Zealand as a matter of course and of business. Half
heroes, half ruffians, they did their work, and unconsciously brought
the islands a stage nearer civilization. Odd precursors of English
law, nineteenth-century culture, and the peace of our lady the Queen,
were these knights of the harpoon and companions of the rum-barrel.
But the isolated coasts and savage men among whom their lot was cast
did not as yet call for refinement and reflection. Such as their time
wanted, such they were. They played a part and fulfilled a purpose,
and then moved off the stage. It so happened that within a few years
after the advent of the regular colonists whaling ceased to pay,
and the rough crew who followed it, and their coarse, manly life,
disappeared together.