Bishop George Selwyn, Archdeacon Alfred Brown and the Flying Fish

Among the small missionary schooners like the Herald, Karere and Kukupa that sailed through Tauranga Harbour’s Maunganui entrance during the 1830s and 40s, was the 17 ton Flying Fish. Built at the Bay of Islands for use as an Anglican missionary vessel, it should not be confused with the Pacific Island’s trading schooner Flying Fish, 35 tons, which under Captain Webster, frequently arrived at, and departed Auckland during this decade).¹

Two men at work on Flying Fish at her berth at Orakei, Auckland, circa. 1844-1847

After Bishop Samuel Marsden’s death in 1838, the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand was led by the Rev. Henry Williams. A former Royal Navy Lieutenant, Williams who had built built the Flying Fish, wrote that the need for a Bishop was very great. George Augustus Selwyn was selected for the position in 1841, with responsibilities that included oversight of the Church of England’s work in New Zealand, as well as among the islands of Melanesia.² Selwyn’s first missionary vessel for use in New Zealand waters was the Flying Fish. A swift and most seaworthy vessel, from 1842 he often referred to it as ‘my yacht’, ‘my little schooner’, and greatly enjoyed taking a turn at the tiller.³ Later remodeled with a deck and cabin, the little schooner proved an ideal craft for visiting New Zealand’s North and South Island mission stations, accessible only by sea and often through challenging harbour entrances.

Bishop George Augustus Selwyn

Selwyn had a close relationship with Tauranga’s leading missionary Alfred Brown. In 1843 and 1844 Brown was encouraged in his arduous overland evangelising work when Selwyn trekked from Auckland to visit him at Matamata and Maungatautari, with an earlier visit to Brown at Te Papa in December 1842. He also showed his faith in Brown’s efforts by appointing him Archdeacon of Tauranga on 20th September 1844. Selwyn was to show his confidence in the new Archdeacon still further, as there is on record a letter written by Brown, on 29th February 1848, declining the appointment to a Bishopric which had been offered him by Selwyn.⁴  

On 9 March 1845, Selwyn recorded that the Flying Fish had made the quickest passage ever recorded for a vessel sailing between Wellington and Auckland. ⁵ Ably skippered by Captain Champion, the Flying Fish was also known as the ‘college schooner’, as it regularly transported missionaries and Maori ‘college boys’ to and from Thames, Tauranga and other Bay of Plenty mission stations to Selwyn’s St Johns College at Kohimarama, Auckland. During mid-1845, Brown was conveyed by the Flying Fish to Tauranga on an urgent visit to see his wife Charlotte and dying invalid son Marsh who had previously been cared for at St. John’s College.

Archdeacon Alfred Nesbitt Brown

Alfred Brown and William Williams, who arrived overland from the Turanga (Poverty Bay) mission station, sailed to Auckland on the Flying Fish for a meeting of Anglican archdeacons, held on 2 and 3 September 1847. Williams briefly recorded a swift overnight voyage to the College anchorage.

At once we set sail with a light wind & crossed the firth of the Thames. Passed the Island of Pakihi at daylight grounding for a short time on a sandspit. Beat up to Auckland with a strong westerly breeze and at four oclock we landed… ⁶

Captain Champion and the Flying Fish made additional voyages to Tauranga’s Te Papa mission station during the 1840s. On 26 September 1846, the schooner returned to St John’s College with flax, potatoes, maize and timber from Tauranga.⁷ In the same year, Selwyn sailed to Tauranga to conduct a confirmation service for some of Brown’s Māori converts at Te Papa^.8

Selwyn’s arduous, extended voyages to New Zealand’s scattered CMS coastal mission stations proved, at times, long and lonely experiences. At the Bay of Islands on 9 March 1845, he recorded:

 

I am sitting in my little cabin, in the schooner Flying Fish of seventeen tons burden; with no other companions than my sailing master, Champion, late boatswain of the Government brig Victoria, and my crew of three New Zealanders.⁹

Captain Champion at the tiller of the Flying Fish

Selwyn did not remain in his cabin for long. On 11 March the ‘rebel’ chiefs Hone Heke Pokai and Te Ruki Kawiti’s warriors attacked Kororareka (Russell) in the first battle of the Flagstaff War. Selwyn, Champion and their Māori crew took some of the terrified settler refugees aboard the Flying Fish, and joined the rescue fleet that transported them safely to Auckland. Initially offered a much larger vessel for his voyages that year, Selwyn, by now an accomplished sailor and commander, declined the offer. Replying by letter to his would-be benefactor he wrote:

In answer to your noble offer of a schooner similar to that given to the Bishop of Newfoundland, I must tell you, that any thing above twenty tons is considered large in our harbours, the greater number of our coasting vessels being about that size; and, if managed by steady men, they perform their voyages with great safety.¹⁰

Bishop George Selwyn continued to sail the sea-battered Flying Fish around his coastal diocese until 1848, when the schooner’s leaks began topping the cabin floor. The final straw it was reported, occurred when he stepped out of bed one morning ‘into a salt water bath’.¹¹  In July 1848, Selwyn took command of the larger 20-ton Undine, another Bay of Islands-built schooner. Whether this vessel also became a familiar sight on the waters of Tauranga Harbour during this era is currently under investigation.

References

¹ ‘Old Mission Ships’, New Zealand Herald, 27 July 1935: 15. 

² Selwyn, George Augustus, Te Ara, New Zealand biographies

https://teara.govt.nz › biographies › selwyn-george-aug...

³ Tucker, H. W; Memoir of the Life and Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn. Bishop of New Zealand, William Wells Gardiner, London, 1879: 148.

Tucker, 1879: 148.

⁴ Waikato Independent, 11 May 1939: 3

⁵ Tucker, 1879: 187.

⁶ Porter, Francis, (ed.), The Turanga Journals 1840-1850” Letters and Journals of William and Jane Williams, Missionaries to Poverty Bay. Victoria University Press, 1Wellington, 1974: 442.

⁷ New Zealander, 26 September 1842: 2.

⁸ Williams, 1974: 370.

⁹ Tucker 1879: 187.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Williams, 1974: 464.

Illustrations

1 Hutton, Thomas Biddulph, 1824-1886. (56) The Flying Fish. Hutton, Thomas Biddulph (Rev), 1824-1886: [Three sketchbooks of New Zealand scenes and people. 1844-1847]. Ref: E-111-1-071. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

2 Mason & Co (Photographers). George Augustus Selwyn. Engraved by W. Hale, 1878-1879 from a photograph by Messrs Mason & Co. [London, 1889]. Curteis, George Herbert, 1824-1894: Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand and of Lichfield ... (London, Kegan Paul, 1889). Ref: PUBL-0148-front. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

3 Hemus & Hanna (Firm). Hemus & Hanna (Auckland) fl 1879-1882: Portrait of Archdeacon A N Brown. Ref: PA3-0103. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

4 Hutton, Thomas Biddulph, 1824-1886. (70) Champion at the tiller. Flying Fish. Hutton, Thomas Biddulph (Rev), 1824-1886: [Three sketchbooks of New Zealand scenes and people. 1844-1847]. Ref: E-111-1-085. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

Whitty Whitmore - A Lifetime of Achievements

By guest author Lucy Mullinger

Whitty as a child

Alaric (Whitty) Whitmore only has two more years before he hits the big 100 and, unsurprisingly, has a lot of great stories to tell. When asked how he made it past 95 - still fit and healthy - witty in nature and name, he replies nonchalantly, “I live longer than most.”

Whitty was born on December 24, 1925 and began his life at the railway stationmaster’s house on Marsh Street, where he reminisces watching his mother bartering with Māori women for kumara.

The family would go on to live in Taumarunui for some time, before moving back to a cold reception in Mount Maunganui near his grandparents - who didn't approve of his parents’ marriage (his mother was Catholic and his dad was Anglican). Despite family tensions, Whitty remembers an idyllic childhood, where he caught food for the family, including rabbits, fish and seafood. He recalls the price of food at the local bakers - three pence for a sultana loaf!

One of his earliest memories includes watching famed aviator Charles Kingsford Smith land his famous plane, the Southern Cross, on the beach near Takitimu Drive (where the big roundabout and flag is now). For just 10 shillings he was given the opportunity to sit in between his dad’s legs and fly to White Island (Whakaari), Mayor Island (Tuhua) and Tauranga in the plane.

Another interesting memory that Whitty laughs at now, was meeting the Duke of Edinburgh. Whitty was hanging from a chain fence outside Elizabeth Park, when Prince Philip and his entourage walked past. The Prince, who was known to suffer from foot in mouth, said, “Look at those monkeys hanging from the wire” to which Whitty replies, “I suppose it depends on the side of the fence you’re on''.

By the time he was 13, Whitty was informed his dad had died: “I went to the funeral in the morning and afterwards got ready for school. Mum said, ‘No, you have to work.’” He went on to deliver meat for Dunlop’s Butchery on Cameron Road and deliver 100 papers for the Bay of Plenty Times.

A few years later, Whitty decided to join up with the army. He asked for his mother’s consent but she said no, until he reminded her that she had brothers younger than him in the navy. He was only 16, but like many other boys at the time, he raised his age to 18 and went to camp in Burnham - where he would go on to serve in the 27th Machine Gun Battalion 2nd NZEF. The hardy Kiwi went on to make it for the last day of the battle of monte cassino and sustained a bullet through his stomach later on in the war, which would exit the same hole that had been sewed up many years before thanks to a burst appendix.

Paperwork from the war trials in Japan

Whitty saw a lot during the war that he doesn’t want to talk about but when it ended, he was told he was in the advanced guard to set up the J Force in Japan. Hiroshima had recently been bombed and there was nothing left standing. “I think there was the framework of only two buildings left”. In September 1946, he was a guard on duty at the war crimes trials of Japanese Generals. For the Whitmore family, it seems the war might be in the blood. His father’s cousin, George Stoddart Whitmore served in the Crimean War and would go on to set sail for New Zealand in 1861 as military secretary for General Duncan Cameron. By the time he arrived in the country, a truce had been declared, so he turned his hands to establishing a sheep run in Napier but by 1866, he led the colonial forces including several attacks on Te Kooti and Titokowaru’s forces. He became known as someone who was fiercely disliked, in part, possibly due to his military ability.

A recent photo of Whitty holding a picture of him during the war

Whitty would go on to spend a lot of his time along the beach side where his fearsome ancestor was said to spend some time. He would catch the ferry from the foot of the Mount, to Tauranga District High school and has fond memories of donkeys which were hired out for rides along the beach by the harbour look out at the time - Taffy Davies.

Whitty also used to climb up the Whitmore steps, which were put in by his ancestor to assist the troops during the Gate Pa wars. They can be found just past the surf club, on the left.

From the moment he left school, to recent times, Whitty has always been a hard worker, which he partly attributes to his long life. As the years progressed he got more experience working hard on the land and went on to run a farm which was the largest supplier to the Bay of Plenty Dairy Company as well as the largest producer of tamarillos in the southern hemisphere.

Whitty continued to play a big part in the farming industry, right up to as recently as 2014, when he was project manager for the Ellip dairy farm conversion in Te Puke, an off-grid project that took 36 working days from issue of permits to milking cows. “I like to get things done,” he says simply.

With four children (three of whom are currently getting a pension) and more grandchildren than he can count, Whitty enjoyed three parties for his ninetieth. With only two years to plan his centenarian, it's anyone’s guess how many parties he will enjoy next time.

Whitty's Story: The Life and Times of Alaric Davenport Whitmore

If you would like to read more about Whitty’s life, send him an email at whittymg27@gmail.com to secure his recently published book Whitty’s Story - The Life and Times of Alaric Davenport Whitmore.

Ada's Birthday Book and the New History Curriculum

“Youth challenging norms” is one of the challenging sub-headings of the Royal Society of NZ/Te Apārangi’s critique [1] of the new history curriculum proposed for release into Aotearoa New Zealand’s schools next year [2].

At page 19 of its report, the panel of experts [3] comments:

The idea of youth ‘challenging social norms’ is a prominent part of the outcomes to the end of Year 10, but does not connect with any other aspects of the curriculum. Young people taking an active role in political activity is something almost completely limited to the period after World War II, and mostly from the beginning of the 1960s. A rare example from an earlier period is the involvement of the Te Aute students (who became known as the Young Maori Party) in promoting health reforms. Through behaviour, some groups, such as those described as larrikins, did challenge social norms, but for every larrikin there were many, many more enthusiastic attendees of Sunday schools. To look at the way young people debated and chose roles that challenged expectations for young men and young women can only be appreciated if we understand what these norms were in the first place. To do this, students would need to consider what it was like to be a young person and how this changed over time. This would have been a more appropriate topic in itself. ^[17]

^[17] Chris Brickell is just one of a number of historians who has written very productively about the history of ‘young people’ and youth culture across New Zealand history. For example: Chris Brickell, Teenagers: The rise of youth culture in New Zealand. Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2017.

In this group of pupils and teachers at Tauranga School [4] are three of the 16 contributors to Ada’s book and the brother of a fourth:  he is N McNaughton, third from left in the back row.  The girls are: Mabel Blick, second from left in the middle row; Ada herself, fourth from left in the same row; and, at the front, second from left, Alice Brain. The date is uncertain but, I would contend, at the earlier end of the range offered (1892-1896). [Editor's Note: Stewart Bros. operated a studio in Tauranga from 1890-1892]

In this blog I suggest that the Tauranga Historical Society is in possession of an excellent primary source of the ‘norms’ of likely attendees – I cannot verify their enthusiasm – of Sunday schools.  Three daughters of Wesleyan Joseph Brain, and thirteen of their friends and beaux, are represented in amusing variety in Ada Brain’s twenty-first birthday [5] present, a volume that records not only the birthdays of her acquaintances but also a series of “Confessions” where they disclose, with a truthfulness that cannot be taken for granted, matters ranging across who their heroes and heroines are, what the ideal man and woman is like, their favourite companion animal and their most admired statesman.  I have described some aspects of this volume in earlier blogs.  It is gratifying now to put Ada’s Birthday and Confessions Book forward as – potentially – a local resource whose importance might sit alongside the Mazengarb report of 1954 [6].

As with the milk bar gangs of the mid-twentieth century, there is almost no direct evidence of political activism in the ‘confessions’ of Ada’s friends made fifty years earlier.  But there are indications of political attitudes.  Lest this essay be cribbed by some earnest Year-Tenner of the future, I do no more than present a few examples of responses that, with further research and careful attention to context, in my view show some threads of

a huge story of human experience, and of formative ideas that emerge from the political, industrial, and social revolutions from the late eighteenth century onwards – events that continue to shape the modern world (where ‘modern’ is taken to characterise the long span from the c.1780s into the late twentieth century, a period that is the context for Māori–European interaction). [7]

For instance, there is the young fellow (Mr F R Koller) who, aged 21, found the peculiarity he was most able to tolerate to be “an intense hatred of wrong” and who thought immorality to be the most detestable vice.  He went on to be a head teacher [8] at Wade, later Silverdale, School.  It is to be hoped that his ardent spirit inspired his pupils and colleagues. 

Brain Watkins House Collection, Courtesy of Tauranga Historical Society

Alice Brain, 18 years old at the time, claimed, possibly mischievously,  “Te Kuiti” to be her favourite hero “in fiction” and the “D. of Wellington” and Florence Nightingale to be her historical hero and heroine.  All names rather well known for challenging established ideas.

Brain Watkins House Collection, Courtesy of Tauranga Historical Society

Then there is the enigmatic HineMoa, who would be seventy years old at her next birthday, but who evidently was part of a youthful social circle and whose “opinion of the girl of the period” was, well:  “Perfection”.  A senior woman affirming younger ones: the green shoots of feminism two years after women in New Zealand achieved the vote.

Brain Watkins House Collection, Courtesy of Tauranga Historical Society

“History can hurt”, the Royal Society report goes on to say.  I acknowledge that some of the light-hearted responses recorded in Ada’s book may cause pain to relatives and descendants of those who made their “Confessions” without any thought that later research might expose them to cool assessment and the judgment of hindsight.  For me, unconnected with any of them, Ada’s book offers invaluable insights into a tiny slice of Tauranga society cheerfully playing a parlour game.  In my view, for that alone, it has an intrinsic value for young students of history.  If they then care to follow some of the threads of meaning offered by the youth of yesteryears, they may find, in the admittedly unreliable responses, a real sense of excitement and a trace of the power of ideas.  

References

---

[1] https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/assets/Aotearoa-New-Zealand-histories-response-to-draft-curriculum-May-2021-digital.pdf

[2] https://ssol.tki.org.nz/Have-your-say-on-Aotearoa-New-Zealand-s-histories-draft-curriculum-content

[3] Professor Charlotte Macdonald FRSNZ, Professor Michael Belgrave (co-convenors), Sir Tipene O’Regan CRSNZ, Emerita Professor Barbara Brookes, Associate Professor Damon Salesa FRSNZ, Sean Mallon, Emerita Professor Manying Ip FRSNZ, Dr Vincent O’Malley, Professor Jim McAloon, Dr Arini Loader (until June 2020), and Kahu Hotere.  Their report was independently reviewed by Emeritus Professor Atholl Anderson FRSNZ, Emeritus Professor Margaret Tennant FRSNZ, and Professor Tony Ballantyne FRSNZ.

[4] Tauranga City Libraries image 04-327. https://paekoroki.tauranga.govt.nz/nodes/view/29335

[5] 26 February 1895

[6] https://nzhistory.govt.nz/the-mazengarb-report-on-juvenile-moral-delinquency-is-released

[7] https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/assets/Aotearoa-New-Zealand-histories-response-to-draft-curriculum-May-2021-digital.pdf, p.15

[8] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19091216.2.88

 

The Sancta Maria and Bishop Pompallier

Early Sailing Vessels and Visitors to Tauranga
Part XI. The Sancta Maria and Bishop Pompallier

At the Bay of Islands in July 1840, Bishop Pompallier bought the Atlas, an aging topsail schooner, from Captain Mayhew, an American who had previously operated a whaling station on the small island of Tahoramaurea, near Kapiti. The bishop planned to use the 120 ton vessel to establish and service new Catholic mission stations in New Zealand. After completing necessary repairs at considerable expense, Pompallier renamed the schooner Sancta Maria (Holy Mary) and endowed it with its own flag, a blue cross on a white field, a golden sun, a monogram of Mary and twelve stars, the flag of the mission.

Pompallier’s 80 foot mission topsail schooner Sancta Maria (Holy Mary)

Pompallier was delighted with his new vessel and with just cause. His previous missionary vessel, Reine de Paix, a forty ton schooner that he described as ‘badly built’ had nearly capsized twice while carrying missionaries between the Pacific Islands and New Zealand. In contrast, he found the 80 foot, Sancta Maria a fast, reliable vessel and a ‘veritable travelling mission station’ which subsequently sailed 1,000 leagues (5,556 km), around New Zealand, including a return voyage to distant Polynesian mission stations over the course of the next six months.

At the end of July 1841, the Sancta Maria sailed from the Bay of Islands with Pompallier and Fathers Baty, Borjon, Seon and Rozet. The priests were placed at new stations, Seon at Matamata, Borjon at Maketu, Rozet at Opotiki, and  Father Baty on the Mahia Peninsula. Baty was promised for Auckland, and the Sancta Maria was to pick him up from the Mahia on its return journey from the South Island. New Zealand’s first Catholic parish, had already been established at Tauranga in May 1840, when Pompallier sent Father Viard and the Maori Catechist Romano to set up a permanent mission there.  During an earlier visit that year, Pompallier had been given land at Otumoetai within the palisades of the pa for a church and a presbytery by the rangatira Tupaea, Tangimoana and Te Omanu.

The events of this historic visit are recorded in Pompallier’s journal:

"At the end of the month of July, after having given the new missionaries information on the work of the mission and grammatical notes on the language of the country, I provisioned the Sancta Maria, and embarked with five priests and three or four catechists to make a fresh voyage round the coasts of New Zealand, and a pastoral visit to Wallis and Futuna and to the Friendly Islands."

"Then I set sail for the Bay of Tauranga [and] arrived… to the great joy of the people of that place. I visited all the tribes there three or four days. I also conferred baptism and confirmation on a certain number of native catechumens. This mission station had been for some months confided to Father Pesant in place of Father Viard, who had been stationed there before him, and whom I had sent for to create him Grand Vicar of my mission."

Jean Baptiste Francois Pompallier 1801- 1871
Pompallier visited Tauranga on three occasions during the years 1840-1841

"Before quitting Tauranga I deputed Father Seon to Matamata… I hove up the anchor of the Sancta Maria, and sailed with Father Viard for Maketu. There I disembarked the chief Tangaroa and his followers, and landed myself with Father Borjon and the catechist, Brother Justin. Nearly all the people belonging to this tribe were away. They had gone to seek provisions from some tribes, their allies, about twenty leagues distant. I found at Maketu a Catholic chapel very well made of reeds and a house of the same material for the priest whom they expected."

"The day after my arrival I sent the Sancta Maria back to Tauranga. I baptized, confirmed, and married the wife of Tangaroa, and, accompanied by Father Viard, I left to visit the tribes of Rotorua. As to Father Borgeon and Brother Justin I left them at Maketu at the new station that had just been inaugurated under the patronage of St. Joachim and St. Anne ..."

Hori Tupaea
Tauranga was New Zealand’s first Catholic parish; established in May 1840 with the assistance of Ngai Te Rangi rangatira including their paramount chief Hori Kingi Tupaea

"On continuing our journey towards Rotorua, we found several tribes of infidels who also sought for the teachings of the Mother Church; but native Protestant catechists had already been among them. I had to uphold against them the legitimacy of the church and of the truths of the faith. Public conferences took place between them and me, and their ignorance and rambling statements damaged their cause and confirmed the people in their desire for the teaching of the Catholic Church ... At length we left these people in an excellent disposition, and at the end of two days we were back at Tauranga, where the Sancta Maria lay at anchor waiting for us."

After striking a reef close inshore on the Otago coast in 1842 while servicing southern mission stations, the Sancta Maria’s captain was able to maneuver the vessel clear with little damage. Later that year, Pompallier was reluctantly obliged to sell ‘his beloved Sancta Maria’, due to an acute shortage of funds. The Catholic mission at Tauranga was compelled to close in late 1863 because of the disturbing effects of the Waikato land war, father Emmanuel Royer being the last priest stationed there.

Sources
McCauley, Debbie, ‘Tauranga Memories, Missionaries in Tauranga’, Tauranga City Libraries, tauranga.kete.net.nz
Pompallier,J. B. F;  Early History of the Catholic Church in Oceania, H. Brett, Auckland, 1888: 74-76.
Simmons, E. R; ‘The First Missionaries’, www.faithcentral.org.nz
Williams, Henry. The Early Journals of Henry Williams 1826-1840, Rogers, L. M. (comp.), Christchurch: Pegasus Press, 1961: 454.
Williams, W. and J; The Turanga Journals 1840–1850, Frances Porter (ed.), Price Milburn, Wellington, 1974: 197.

Illustrations
O’Keefe, C. J. Sancta Maria, photograph of a sketch [circa 1939], Marist Messenger, National Catholic Monthly, 1 April 2019: 4.
Pompallier, J. B. F;  Early History of the Catholic Church in Oceania, H. Brett, Auckland, 1888: Title Page.
Robley, Horatio Gordon, Maori Chief Hori Kingi Tupaea [circa1864], Ref. A-128-025-1, National Library of New Zealand, Wellington.