A Brief Three-Part History of Karewa Island

Part 1 - Early Human Visitors and its Inhabitants 

Karewa Island
Whites Aviation, Karewa Island, February 1954, with Mount Maunganui and the Tauranga Harbour entrance in the background
Alexander Turnbull Library, Ref. WA-35082-F

Karewa Island is located some 4 miles or 6.5 km north-east of the Tauranga harbour entrance. When viewed from the higher parts of Tauranga township, it appears as a solitary, conical rock, jutting abruptly from the waters of the Bay of the Plenty. When viewed during a north-easterly blow from atop Mt Maunganui, the island seems to be on the move. It appears as an orca or great white shark swimming on the surface and steadily battling its way out to sea. The island’s foreshore environment comprises bedrock slopes, rocky reefs, and rock pools with several small, sandy beaches. Parts of the island are forested in taupata, a resilient, low growing shrub or small tree bearing very shiny dark green leaves. Widely used as a hedge plant for seaside gardens, taupata forms the low, dense forests that we often see on coastal islands and along the exposed coasts of the North Island and upper South Island.¹

 

For Maori, Karewa island was a traditional harvest site for titi (mutton birds) and kai moana (sea food), with paua, crayfish and kina (sea urchins) abundant on almost all the rocky reefs. The island remains a very popular dive site and is well known among locals, for the variety of fish caught in the surrounding waters.²  Karewa is a home to kekeno or fur seals, but is best known for its high densities of tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus). These ancient reptiles are dependent on the continued productivity of the surrounding marine environment, especially the well-being of the mutton birds or sooty shearwaters which coexist with them and share their burrows.³

When Captain Cook sailed the Endeavour between Mount Maunganui and Mayor Island on 3^rd November 1769, he did not name Karewa, describing it instead as ‘a small high island’.⁴ The late 19^th century ethnologist Elsdon Best wrote that Karewa was the named by the first Polynesian deep-sea navigators who arrived in the Bay of Plenty on the Takitimu waka around 12^th century A.D. He states that they named Karewa after the star, upon which they relied, to make their voyage to New Zealand.⁵ Gilbert Mair, the colonial soldier and New Zealand Cross winner who, from the 1860s, lived out his life in the Bay of Plenty, said however that the first arrivals on the Te Arawa waka named the island Karewa because: ‘In fine weather, owing to mirage, it appears to be like Mahomet's coffin, floating in the air, the silver streak of sea showing plainly underneath; hence the name Ka-rewa, to float’.⁶ 

Gilbert Mair later sailed tuatara collectors from Taurangato to Karewa Island on board his 35-foot whaleboat
Gilbert Mair in military uniform, glass copy negative of half-tone print, unidentified photographer
Alexander Turnbull Collection, Ref. 1/1-017971-G

Mair added, that to his annoyance, the Maori name Karewa and other Tauranga place names were too often mispronounced by Pakeha. 

Some friends in Tauranga, where I am now resident, pronounce the simplest Maori names quite incorrectly… Here are a few illustrations of this ear-annoying mispronunciation:
Katikati is popularly Katty-kat.

Maungatapu is mutilated into Manggertap.
Waimapu is called Waimap.
Paapaa moa becomes Papper-moa.
And Karewa is Karewha.⁷

Sir Maui Pomare recorded that traditional uhi Mataora or the face carving chisels used by tohunga ta moko (tattooing experts) were often made from the wing-bone of the albatross, adding that: ‘The Bay of Plenty tribes made expeditions to Karewa Island, which was a breeding place for the albatross and many other sea-birds.⁸ Among the other sea-birds nesting on Karewa were gannets, whose feathers were highly prized by the rangatira class as adornments for their hair. One of the myths recorded from Rotorua’s Te Arawa people concerning Hatupatu, describes the appearance of this famous ancestral hero figure, when he stood to address and inspire his warriors before battle.

He had been sitting down, and as he gracefully arose, it was beautiful to see his plumes and ornaments of feathers fluttering in the breeze; the long hair of the young man was tied up in four knots, or clubs, in each of which was stuck a bunch of feathers; you would have thought he had just come from the gannet island of Karewa where birds' feathers abound^.9

Tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus)
Bernard Sladden. Close-up view of a tuatara on a branch. Date: Within Sladden's adult life (1900-1961) Tauranga City Libraries. Pae Koroki Ref. Photo bs-205

Karewa Island is often mentioned in the journals of Tauranga’s pre-Treaty missionaries. After arriving in the Bay of Islands in 1834, the missionary printer William Wade went on to the Bay of Plenty to help establish the new mission station at on Tauranga’s Te Papa Peninsula. When intertribal warfare broke out in the district in 1836, he was evacuated back to Paihia. After a dispute with the Anglican Church Missionary Society over his employment, in April 1840, Wade left Tauranga to serve as a baptist minister in Tasmania. One of his journal entries read:

In every part of New Zealand that I have visited lizards are numerous. There are several varieties of small green lizard; and, by native account, many of the insular rocks abound with guanas. The island Karewa, off Tauranga, is said to swarm with them. Although perfectly harmless, the lizard is held in great abhorrence by the New Zealanders, who say it is the form or resemblance of Wiro, the evil Spirit.¹⁰ 

A portrait of Taurikura, the mythical ancestress of Karewa Island’s tuatara can be seen today in the poupou (carved wall pillars) of  the meeting house Tamateapokaiwhenua in Tauranga’s Judea
Photographer unknown, Tamateapokaiwhenua Wharenui, 1962. Tauranga City Libraries, Pae Koroki Ref. Photo 16-139

In Maori mythology, Whiro, the god inhabiting the underworld was a personified form of evil, misfortune, darkness and death. The first tuatara to resemble Whiro on Karewa was, according to Ngati Ranginui legend, their female ancestress Taurikura. A spoilt young woman of noble birth, she one day refused to fetch water for her thirsty koro [grandfather], With great difficulty, the old man who was disabled, descended a steep track to the river, before returning with a gourd of water which Tauri-kura demanded.  The old man became angry and told her that she was selfish and a disappointment.

Embarrassed and ashamed of her behaviour, Taurikura left the village with a kit of charms and went down to the river. There she turned herself into a ngarara or reptile and swam down the Waikaraeo Estuary and out to Karewa where she became the ancestor of the tuatara that live on the island today. Taurikura is remembered at Judea today, where her carved portrait can be seen on the poupou (carved wall pillars) in the meeting house Tamateapokaiwhenua.¹¹

During the 1830s, the island became a regular provisioning port of call for the Bay of Islands’ missionaries during voyages on their small sailing vessels to and from Tauranga, Maketu, Whakatane and Opotiki in the Bay of Plenty. In February 1832, the Rev. Henry Williams and his Maori crew, sailed the mission schooner Karere (Messenger) to Maketu in the hope of making peace between warring tribes. After camping overnight at Mercury Bay on the 26^th he recorded:

 

Fine morning. I intended to move at break of day, but the boys were apprehensive of a Southerly wind; delayed till 9 o'clock when we pulled out in quest of a wind. A breeze sprung up at East, which shifted in the course of the day to North. Passed on at an agreeable rate to Karewa. Mr. Chapman out of sight. The boys landed and caught a number of young birds and found some potatoes, which afforded them a good supper. Entered Tauranga by 9 o'clock, landed under the Great Hill, "Maunga nui." Kindled fires and cooked our supper which we all stood much in need of having taken nothing. Rolled ourselves up in blankets, and laid down on the ground…Our distance run today about 40 miles.¹²

A stylised painting of Henry William’s Karere (Messenger) accompanying a Ngapuhi predatory expedition to Tauranga in 1832, in the hope of negotiating peace.
Joseph Josenhans, “War Canoes’ in Illustrations of Missionary Scenes, An Offering to Youth, Mainz, Joseph Scholz, 1855. XII

Departing Maketu on the Karere with a full complement of Maori passengers six weeks later, Williams again described landing on Karewa, and an additional Maori reason for fearing the tuatara:

Tuesday, 26. A quiet night. At daylight calm but cloudy, afraid to move out. No stir amongst the natives, all quiet. At 5 p.m. light airs from the N. E.; left the harbour on our way home, in all seventeen including Hamu our old lady who accompanied us from the BOI, besides a dog and two kittens, our boat was very full. We pulled to Karewa, a small island 8 miles from Tauranga. Some of the boys landed here to look for birds and potatoes. Upon the island are Ruatara, a species of the lizard about a foot in length, which are regarded by the natives as Atua. Strict orders given [by Hamu or an accompanying rangatira] not to disturb them in their holes lest we should be upset. About 8 o'clock a light air from Southd; got underweigh and stood on our course.¹³

Dr Ernest Dieffenbach
Dieffenbach, Ernest, Travels in New Zealand, Vol. II, John Murray, London, 1843: Frontispiece
Alexander Turnbull Library, Ref. A-259-010

Karewa’s tuatara drew several famous men of science to Tauranga during the 1840s and 50s. The touring German naturalist and geologist Dr. Ernest Dieffenbach visited Tauranga’s Te Papa mission station for several days during June 1841. Wishing to obtain a tuatara specimen, he attempted to visit Karewa as a passenger on one of the mission station’s whaleboats, but was forced back to port by bad weather. He was not however, entirely disappointed in his quest:

I had been apprized of the existence of a large lizard, which the natives called Tuatera, or Narara, with a general name, and of which they were much afraid. But although looking for it at the places where it was said to be found, and offering great rewards for a specimen, it was only a few days before my departure from New Zealand that I obtained one, which had been caught at a small rocky islet called Karewa, which is about two miles from the coast, in the Bay of Plenty, and which had been given by the Rev. W. Stack, in Tauranga, to Dr. Johnson, the colonial surgeon.

 

From all that I could gather about this Tuatera, it appears that it was formerly common in the islands; lived in holes, often in sandhills near the sea-shore; and the natives killed it for food. Owing to this latter cause, and no doubt also to the introduction of pigs, it is now very scarce; and many even of the older residents of the islands have never seen it. The specimen from which the description is taken I had alive, and kept for some time in captivity: it was extremely sluggish, and could be handled without any attempt at resistance or biting.¹⁴   

HMS Pandora
Thomas Hornbrook, HMS Pandora (1833), Wikipedia

During his survey of Tauranga Harbour in November 1852, Captain Byron Drury of HMS Pandora described Karewa as: ‘a rugged island about half a mile in circumference) 6 miles N. E. by N. of Monganui, is two miles off this sandy beach, having a channel on either side, of 12 to 15 fathoms’.¹⁵ According to Lieutenant Theodore Jones of the Pandora who toured the Tauranga district with some of the ship’s officers:

          During our absence Capt. Drury accompanied by the doctor [surgeon John Joliffe, R.N.], had visited the little Island of Karewa, about three miles from the entrance of the harbour, where they succeeded in capturing some very large lizards, the longest measuring 20 inches. It had been supposed that this was the only Island on which they were to be found, having been quite exterminated on the mainland. On a subsequent visit to Mongonui one had just been found in that neighbourhood, and I believe on Moto horo [Moutohora-Whale Island], they have also been seen. They have a rather repulsive appearance – of a darkish brown colour with serrated back – and of them either living or dead the Natives have a most lively horror.¹⁶

Not all Maori appear to have held the tuatara ‘in great abhorrence’. On Motiti Island where they were once common, Gilbert Mair saw one that Maori had kept safely from predators in an old kumara pit ‘for over three generations’. ¹⁷  

Endnotes

¹ Karewa Island – Dive Zone Tauranga, https://www.divezonetauranga.co.nz › karewa-island

² Site 68 Karewa Island Risk Ranking, https://www.boprc.govt.nz › media › karewa

3 https://www.divezonetauranga.co.nz › karewa-island

⁴  Reed, A.H. and A.W; (eds.), Captain Cook in New Zealand: Extracts From the Journals of Captain James Cook, A.H. and A.W. Reed, Wellington, 1969: 55.

⁵ Elsdon Best, The Astronomical Knowledge of the Maori, Genuine and Empirical, W.A.G. Skinner, Government Printer, Wellington, 1922: 40.

⁶ Mair, Gilbert, Reminiscences and Maori Stories, Brett Publishers, Auckland 1923: 52-53. 1923:

⁷ Ibid.

 

⁸ Pomare, Maui, Legends of the Maori, Vol. II, James Cowan (ed.), Southern Reprints, Papakura, 1987: 315

 

⁹ Grey, Sir George, Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History of the New Zealand Race, H. Brett, Auckland, 1885: 122.

¹⁰ Wade, William, A Journey in the Northern Island of New Zealand, George Rolwegan, Hobart, 1842: 178.

¹¹ Bay of Plenty Times, 23 December, 1948: 4. Rotorua Daily Post, 22 June, 2013: 7. Taurikura – Te Rununga O Ngati Ranginu, http://www.ranginui.co.nz › taurikura

¹² Williams, Henry, The Early Journal of Henry Williams, L.M. Rogers (ed.), Pegasus Press, Christchurch, 1961: 286-287.

¹³ Ibid: 301.

 

¹⁴ Dieffenbach, Ernest, Travels in New Zealand, Vol. 1, John Murray, London, 1843: 206.

 

¹⁵ Byron Drury, Sailing Directions… For the Northern Part of the Colony of New Zealand, Williamson and Wilson, 1854: 28.

 

¹⁶ Jones, T. M; ‘HMS Pandora in the Bay of Plenty, 1852’, Extracts from the Journal of Lieutenant T.M. Jones, RN, Part II: 72, in Historical Review: Journal of the Whakatane and District Historical Society Inc. Vol. XVIII, No.2: 72.

 

¹⁷ Waipa Post, 1 March 1923: 3.

Edward Clementson, Castaway and Flax Agent, 1833-1838

Tauranga’s Early Traders Part IV
 

Like the South Shields collier Mary shown here in two views, Clementson’s vessels Elizabeth and Bee were British built brigs – vessels generally defined as square sailed, 2 masted vessels, often with one or more try sails between foremast and bowsprit and a fore-and-aft spanker boom sail off the main mast.

Edward Clementson enters New Zealand history in 1830 as a 23-year-old ship’s mate on Captain John Stewart’s 236-ton English brig Elizabeth, which sailed from Sydney to New Zealand in search of a cargo of muka or dressed flax.¹   In return for a promised shipload of this commodity, Stewart transported 100 of Te Rauparaha’s Ngati Toa warriors from Kapiti to Banks Peninsula. There, they surprised and slaughtered many Ngai Tahu people at Takapuneke and captured their leading rangatira Te Maiharanui and his wife. Both were later tortured and killed at Kapiti. The Elizabeth’s crew was reported by Ngai Tahu survivors to have actively participated in the attack. John Stewart was subsequently arrested and sent to trial in Sydney where the charges were dismissed. Although Clementson had led the party of three sailors who seized and chained Te Maiharanui and was described in NSW official documents as one of the two principal offenders, he was not prosecuted.²

By 1832, Edward Clementson was in command of the brig Bee, sharing with the first mate responsibilities for the deck crew, ship’s cargo and navigation. Despite its assorted crews and skippers (including Clementson), the 135-ton, square-rigged sealer-trader was sailed repeatedly and successfully between Hobart and New Zealand, and along the latter’s uncharted, unlighted, inshore “cannibal coast”, for more than 20 years.³

Between Abel Tasman’s visit in 1642 and the Treaty in 1840, Maori throughout New Zealand launched 111 recorded taua ito (blood vengeance) and taua muru (ritualised plundering) raids against ships, ships boats and shore parties, almost all retaliatory in accordance with tikanga Maori or customary law. Given these turbulent times, the Bee had a remarkably long period of service, particularly as most voyages were made during the Sealers War (1810-1822) and the most intensive years of the intertribal Musket Wars (1818 -1839).⁴ 

The journalist-historian James Cowan said of the Bee’s voyages during this era:

Under one owner and another, and a succession of hard-case skippers, this busy Bee knocked about New Zealand and its off-shore islands wherever there was a cargo of flax to be picked up from the Maoris in exchange for muskets and gunpowder, or a load of oil and bone from its shore-whalers, or a lot of skins from the seal-hunting gangs. In her spare time she went whaling, like many other South Sea traders of that day.⁵  

In 1833, a time served convict from Hobart town named William Cuthbert, also known as Lincoln Bill, managed to raise enough capital from creditors to charter the Bee and a cargo of “trade” intended for barter with coastal iwi. On boarding the vessel, he directed the Bee’s new captain, William Stewart to sail for New Zealand ostensibly ‘to trade for flax and pigs, oil and “general fixings”, which at that time included smoke-dried tattooed heads; trade term, “baked heads”.  Cuthbert first ordered Stewart to proceed to Tasmania’s Maria Island where he took aboard three escaped convicts from the penal settlement and their captive policeman escort.⁶     

William Stewart was a master mariner and navigator of some repute and Stewart Island is named after him. Clementson, who remained on the Bee in the role of first mate quarrelled with Cuthbert who planned to sail the brig to Peru where he hoped to sell the vessel and its cargo. In due course, the brig reached the New Zealand coast at Tauranga. Here, Cuthbert ordered Clementson ashore at pistol point on one of its beaches “with barely more than the clothes he wore”.⁷

In 1833 Edward Clementson was abandoned on one of Tauranga’s beaches by the Bee’s piratical master William Cuthbert

The Bee’s crew set sail for the Pacific Islands where Cuthbert later dumped the police constable and the three Maria Island convicts. For some months, he and his crew, which mostly comprised time expired convicts like himself, commenced an island hopping, drunken debauch with Polynesian women from various islands between, and including, Tahiti and Hawaii, on their way to Peru. However at Honolulu Harbour, William Cuthbert disappeared, perhaps forewarned that the Sydney authorities had declared the brig a pirated vessel, though the Maketu based trader Phillip Tapsell was later informed that the pirate had been hanged.⁸ The Bee was eventually returned to Sydney and sold for the benefit of Cuthbert’s creditors.

There were no missionaries resident in Tauranga in 1833 and Clementson was fortunate not to have been captured by Ngapuhi or Te Arawa, whose allied waka fleets often entered the harbour and occupied its shores that year to make war on local iwi. Clementson found refuge among Ngai Te Rangi’s trader Pakeha-Maori at Otumoetai Pa, where he was soon recruited as a flax buying agent by the Maketu based trader Phillip Tapsell. Led by Tapsell, Clementson and several Maori guides set out from Maketu to Rotorua, then on to Matamata Pa, the base from which the castaway Englishman was to conduct his trade. The journey and reception at Matamata must have been a strange experience for Clementson, a veteran seaman recently turned landlubber. Tapsell told his biographer, the Maketu Postmaster, Mr E. Little in 1869:

For a part of the way our journey was very severe, over a succession of steep mountains, the sides of which were like precipices, and though the forest of Patatere [sic], which was so dense, and obstructed with undergrowth and supplejack, that our passage through it was toilsome beyond measure. Matamata was at that time a very beautiful place, and provisions of all kind very abundant, A great feast was prepared on the arrival of our party from Maketu. Pigs were killed and roasted, baskets of eels prepared, and stacks of potatoes sufficient for a hundred men; in addition to which a large number of live pigs were sent for our party to kill for ourselves.⁹ 

When Tapsell had negotiated terms of trade with Te Waharoa and other leading rangatira, he and his guides returned to Maketu, leaving Clementson among Matamata’s Ngati Haua people.¹⁰   

Tapsell had already placed traders at Matamata Pa to exchange muskets, munitions and general trade goods for dressed flax. Appointed chief trading agent by Tapsell, Clementson appears to have been readily accepted by his fellows, while he adopted their Pakeha-Maori lifestyle and became fluent in Maori. When the Anglican missionaries Williams, Fairburn, Brown and Morgan ascended the Waihou for the first time in 1833, they were welcomed at Matamata by Te Waharoa. Williams noted that Ngati Haua’s traders were "very civil" Nevertheless, that evening when the missionaries and their christianised Maori porters commenced a hymn, Clementson and his three companions countered from within their whare with a voluminous version of Old King Cole.¹¹

This sketch by Henry Williams of missionaries crossing a swamp is based on his arduous traverse of the Matamata’s great Mangapouri swamp with Revs Fairburn, Brown and Morgan in 1833. The same swamp was traversed by Clementson’s great cross-Kaimai flax trains from 1833.

As arranged by Tapsell and Te Waharoa, for the next several years Clementson's consignments of flax were back packed or pikaued through the great korari or flax swamp known as Mangapouri (Dark Stream) and across the Waihou River, seperating Matamata and the Kaimai Range. They were then laboriously transported up the 1,600-foot range by long lines of women, older children and slaves who camped overnight on the broad summit plateau. Descending the ancient and deeply rutted Wairere track the following day, the porters crossed the Te Puna Peninsula to the Wairoa River mouth. There, they were met by the Otumoetai based Farrow brothers who supervised the consignments’ loading aboard vessels bound for Bay of Islands and those contracted to the Sydney merchant Richard Jones.

While Clementson’s consignments were intermittent, they were considerable. In a letter written to Henry Williams in on 11 September 1835, Alfred Brown who was visiting Tauranga reported: "Mr Clementson is just going to transport upwards of fifty tons of flax to Tauranga in two thousand back-loads. All this has been scraped by the natives since I have been here".¹²

A trader bartering with Maori for baskets of dressed flax and a pig during the 1830s

Despite his actions during the Elizabeth affair, Clementson established and remained on good terms with Tapsell, his fellow traders at Matamata Pa and the Bay of Islands missionaries during their temporary visits to Tauranga between 1833 and 1838. When Clementson learned that Te Waharoa was planning to attack Maketu Pa in early 1836, he twice sent one of his traders to warn Tapsell.¹³ When Rev John Wilson visited Tauranga on the little missionary cutter Kukupa in 1836, the year intertribal warfare in the region reached its apogee, Clementson sent him a bodyguard - a ferocious bull-dog cross, incongruously named Breezy.¹⁴  

Later that year, when Clementson and James Farrow visited the Bay of Islands, they joined the missionaries in supporting a petition to King William IV, by settlers, exasperated at the absence of law and order.¹⁵ Fortunately for Clementson, when he once cursed Te Waharoa “native fashion”, a curse associated with evil and death, a timely intervention by Alfred Brown saved his life. The utu (payment or compensation) demanded by Te Waharoa, and known to have been paid by Brown, while unstated, will have been substantial.¹⁶   

 

Te Waharoa died in 1838 and his Pakeha-Maori Edward Clementson, died soon after, during a voyage from Tauranga to Matata. His trader contemporary James Farrow who survived the voyage informed Phillip Tapsell:

 

       He [Farrow], his wife, Clementson and a young man named Jenkins had set out … with a view of meeting with Mr White [resident trader at Matata and later, a prolific boatbuilder], and when off the place, were overtaken by a gale of wind. It would have been easy for them to have run under the lee of Whale Island where they could have had smooth water, and there have waited till the storm subsided, but their young companion being inexperienced and very confident, was strongly desirous that they should at once land at Matata, which he was of the opinion they could easily do.

 

Yielding to this opinion, they pulled for the mainland, on approaching which, they found a very heavy surf breaking on the bar. Appearances were so threatening, that when near the entrance to the river, they laid on their oars to deliberate on the best course to pursue. They consulted so long that before they were aware, the boat drifted into the breakers and was capsized. Jenkins not being able to swim, went down like a shot. Clementson was a good swimmer, but was so encumbered by heavy boots and buttoned up to the throat with a pea jacket, that after a few strokes, he sank also.¹⁷  

 

James Farrow, who was also a good swimmer, almost succumbed to exhaustion, but encouraged by his Maori wife who swam by his side, he eventually reached the shore and safety.

 

References

¹ NZ pre-1846, Person page 791, Early NZ history, nzearlyhistory.com, http://www.nzearlyhistory.com › p791 

² Ogilvie, Gordon, Banks Peninsula, Cradle of Canterbury, GP Books, Wellington, 1990: 155. McNab, Robert, Historical Records of New Zealand, Vol. II, Government Printer, Wellington, 1914: 594.

³ Daily Southern Cross, 4 August 1869: 6. 

⁴ Bentley, Trevor, Pakeha Slaves, Maori Masters, New Holland, Auckland, 2019: 22-23, 25-26.

⁵ Cowan, James, ‘Rovers of the Brig “Bee’ – The Story of a Lawless Cruise in the Old Pacific’, in The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Vol. 13, Issue 3, 1938: 17-20.

⁶ Daily Southern Cross, 4 August 1869: 6. 

⁷ Auckland Star, 8 December 1928: 1. (Supplement). Cowan, JPS, Vol. 13: 18.

⁸ Daily Southern Cross, 4 August 1869: 6.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Ibid. 

¹¹ Vennell, C.W; Brown and the Elms, D.H. Maxwell, Tauranga, 1984: 12.

¹² Gifford, W.H. and H.B. Williams, A Centennial History of Tauranga, The Tauranga Centennial Committee and A.H. and A.W. Reed, Dunedin, 1940, Capper Reprint, 1976: 209.

¹³ Tapsell, P; ‘Reminiscences, 1777?-1873’. Ref. ½-005486, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, NZ: 155-156.

 

¹⁴ Wilson, J.A; Missionary Life and Work in New Zealand, 1889: 56.

 

¹⁵ Polack, J.S; New Zealand, Vol II, Richard Bentley, London, 1838, Capper Reprint, 1974: 188.  

 

¹⁶ L.W. ‘Te Waharoa of NgatiHaua’, in The Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol 71, No. 4 1962: 368.

 

¹⁷ Tapsell, P.  ‘Reminiscences’,155-156.

 

Illustrations

John Scott, The South Shields Collier Brig ‘Mary’ 1885, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org ›wiki › Brig

John Kinder, Mt Maunganui, Tauranga, 1874, 1937/15/46, Auckland Art Gallery, Toi O Tamaki.

Henry Williams, ‘Passing through a swamp in New Zealand’, PUBL-0031-1836-1. Alexander Turnbull library, Wellington, NZ.

John Williams, ‘A European male, thought to be Joel Polack bargaining with three Maori males’, [1845-1846]. A-079-017. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, NZ>