The “Glenbervie.”

The store ship “Glenbervie,” 387 tons commanded by Capt. Wm. Black, left page 37 London on October 2nd, 1839, and arrived at the Port on the 7th March, 1840. There were five cabin and two steerage passengers. The names of the former were Messrs. J. Smith, R. Inglis, R. Heaver, Mr. Watt and lady, and Mr. and Mrs. Northwood.^*

Lady readers will be interested to learn how the passengers were provided with suitable clothes for the voyage and Colonial life, with which they were supplied at the prices quoted hereunder:—

The barque “Bolton,” 540 tons, commanded by Capt. J. P. Robinson, with Dr. R. Godfrey Lowe as Surgeon Superintendent, sailed on the 1st November, 1839, and arrived April 21st 1840. There were 66 married couples, 23 single men, 13 single women, 23 children from nine fourteen, 60 children from one to nine, and 8 under one year.

The “Bolton,” described as the “October” ship, had, against the name of each emigrant, the names of the following persons who recommended them, and summarised thus:—Lord Petre, Revds. Butler and J. F. Churton, Messrs. H. Shafto, Harrison, Jas. Gordon, Hulke, T. Woolcombe, Geo. Whiting, Collet, J. Coverdale, J. Minet, B. E. Duppa, E. Cherry, Jos. Somes, J. Phipson, Ashton, W. E. Wallace, Mears, and Gracechurch.

Enquiries respecting Agricultural Labourers were noted on the back of the Register. These apparently emanated from J. Raymond Barker, Esq., Fairfield Park, Glostershire, and Captain Raymond, Gravesend, C/o Lewis Gilson, Esq., Star Office, Fresh Wharf, London Bridge.

The passenger list is as follows:—

When the New Zealand Company sent out their exploring expedition, they explained to Colonel Wakefield that there was probably some one part of New Zealand better suited than any other to become the centre of its trade. The shores of safe and commodious harbours, the sheltered emboucheres of an extensive river communicating with a fertile country, were the situations to which his attention was directed, and he was especially instructed to make purchases of land on the shores of that harbour which should appear to offer the greatest facilities as a general trading depot, and port of export and import for all parts of the Islands. But closely followed, unfortunately, by several hundred intending settlers, Colonel Wakefield had no time to spare in selecting a site for their location. Many harbours were already occupied by claimants still earlier in the field, and in the selection of a site for their first and principal settlement, the page 39 New Zealand Company was confined to unoccupied localities.

On visiting Thorndon, the level piece of land at the south west extremity of the harbour, on which he had intended to place the town, Colonel Wakefield was well received by the natives of that part. More than one competitor for land had paid a visit since the Colonel's departure for the North, and had attempted to buy patches of land over the agent's head. One of these was a Mr. R. Tod, who had been fortunate enough to discover an inferior chief named Moturoa, who was absent during the Port Nicholson purchase in September, and who had agreed to sell him three or four acres on the most promising part of the beach, near Pipitea Point and Pa (corner of Mulgrave and Pipitea Street). Mr. Tod appeared resolved to maintain this transaction by every possible means, but Moturoa very soon showed a disposition to assent to the large sale of Port Nicholson, and receive some utu from Colonel Wakefield for his rights and claims, which Wharepouri and Te Puni both described as very insignificant.

Two acres of land, adjoining section 600 and Pipitea Pa, with a frontage to the beach, were granted to the Church Missionary Society in the names of the Rev. Henry Williams and Richard Davis, in lieu of their claim.

The sand hummocks at the back of the long beach at Pito-one were dotted with tents of all sizes and shapes, and native built huts in various stages of construction, while heaps of goods lay about anywhere between high-water mark and the houses. Ploughs, bricks, millstones, tent poles, saucepans, crockery, iron, pothooks, triangles, casks of all sizes, bales of all sorts were distributed about. The greatest good humour prevailed among the owners of these multifarious articles. The novelty and excitement of their employment appeared to give them high spirits and courage. They pitched their tents and piled up their goods in rude order, while the natives, equally pleased and excited, sung Maori songs to them from the tops of the whares or huts where they sat tying the rafters and thatch together with flaxen bands. At the back of the tavern, whither a flagstaff and a New Zealand flag invited the sailors, a rough and newly made track struck off to the settlement on the riverbank, across a miry swamp. About a quarter of a mile beyond this swamp, at the junction of a small creek with the Hutt, was the beginning of a little village of tents and huts, among the low scrubby coppice wood which covered this part of the valley. A rough path had been cleared by the surveyors along the bank, and on either side of this the Colonists had been allowed to squat on allotted portions until the survey of the Town should be completed.

Captain Smith had preferred the lower part of the valley of the Hutt to Thorndon and its neighbourhood for the site of the town, as the whole eleven hundred acres, with sufficient reserves, for promenades and other public purposes, could be laid out on level ground in the alluvial valley. He had neglected the instructions given by Colonel Wakefield to the man (another Mr. Smith), left behind by the “Tory” in September, 1839, to have the town laid out at Thorndon, and had proceeded with the survey of the Hutt banks. The dense forest and swampy ground impeded the rapid progress of the survey.

The squatters on the Hutt were no less busy and merry than their fellows on the beach. Mr. Edward Betts Hopper, of Dover, Mr. Henry William Petre, page 40 and Mr. Francis Alexander Molesworth had formed themselves into a commercial firm, and had brought with them the complete machinery of a steam-engine of twenty horse power, adapted for sawing or flour mills.

They were as busy as the rest, landing and arranging their goods. At high water, the ship's long-boats and private cargo-boats brought quantities of goods up to the owners' locations. The labourers and masters worked altogether at the casks, bales, and other heavy things; the natives lent their willing aid, being very handy in the water and then returned, either to a job at hut-building, or to hawk about their pigs and potatoes, which they brought in canoes to this quick market.

Each capitalist appeared to have a following of labourers from his own part of the country. Cornish miners and agricultural labourers had pitched their tents near Mr. Molesworth; Kentish men dwelt near Mr. George Duppa, a little higher up; and many of the Scotch-people were collected near a point between two reaches of the river, where Mr. Dudley Sinclair and Mr. Barton were erecting their dwellings. At the latter place Mr. Sinclair's English cow was browsing on the shrubs of her newly-adopted country.

Small patches for gardens were already being cleared in various spots; ruddy flaxen-haired children were playing about near the doors; and the whole thing made an impression of cheerfulness and contentment.

Then the mildness of the climate, the good preparations made before leaving England, and the hearty good-feeling existing among the Colonists themselves as well as between them and the natives, all tended to give the extensive bivouac the air of a picnic on a large scale, rather than a specimen of the hardships of a Colony.

For, although all were often wet in the numerous boat excursions and fording of streams and creeks, or occasional showers of rain, no one felt any injury to his health; master and man toiled with equal energy and good-will; and both enjoyed a good meal, often served up with all the comforts of civilised life. Thus, in a little, cramped, but weather-tight tent, you found a capitalist in shirt-sleeves, taking a hasty meal of preserved meat and good vegetables (the latter grown from the seeds that were left with Smith), and drinking good beer or wine. Each English family had got a native or two particularly attached to them. They supplied their guests with potatoes and firewood, and with an occasional pig; shared in the toils and meals of the family; delighted at the novelty of every article unpacked, and were very quick at learning the use of the new tools and inventions; chattered incessantly in Maori and broken English; and devoted themselves, each to his own Pakeha, with the greatest good-breeding, patience and kind attention.^*

Te Puni had attached himself especially to Colonel Wakefield. The stores were placed entirely under his care, of which he was not a little proud. He and his people were engaged in a good sized house near the store-house for the Colonel. Another Pito-one man built a house for Jerningham Wakefield, which the latter made over to Dr. Dorset, who had taken shelter at first under the roof of an old friend of his, a passenger in the “Aurora.”

A few wanderers from Australia and elsewhere arrived in small schooners and cutters about this time. A grog shop

^* “Wakefield's Adventure,” p. 148.

page 41

Fig. 18—Pito-one Beach, where the first settlers landed. Copied by Mr. Basil R. Ward, A.R.I.B.A. (Rangoon), from a pencilled sketch drawn by Betts-Hopper, Esq., from on board the Oriental (seen in the forefront) in 1840. “The village lay, as it's Maori name (‘Pito-one,’ or ‘End of the Sand’) implied, at the Western end of the sandy beach, which is two miles long… The valley seems to preserve an average width of two miles to a considerable distance, bounded on either side by wooded hills from 300 to 400 ft. in height. It was covered with high forest to within a mile and a half of the beach, when swamps full of flax and a belt of sand hummocks intervened.” (Wakefield's Adventure in N.Z., p. 54). This picture depicts the few tents and huts on the beach. The original of this sketch is in a book of sketches in the possession of Mr. E. G. Pilcher. The book (over a hundred years old) contains sketches of old English scenery, and the hills near Port Nicholson, drawn by Mr. Hopper as the Oriental sailed slowly into the Harbour.

Fig. 19—Hon. Francis Molesworth's Residence at the Hutt, 1841.

page 42 was established half-way along the beach, where a disorderly assemblage of sailors, stray whalers, and bad characters from the different whaling stations, had become accustomed to meet, and caused some annoyance to the quiet settlers by their drunkenness and wild orgies.

Colonel Wakefield's warning to the tavern keeper against a continuance of these disturbances, was treated with contempt. Upon this he explained his views to Te Puni and Wharepouri, and they, with several other chiefs of authority, accompanied him, with their arms and mats of state, to the den in question, and confirmed the Colonel's statement that he had acted by their authority. This demonstration had the desired effect.