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The Rosanna Settlers, by Hilda McDonnell

A remnant of the Rosanna settlers
Chapter 1

Contents: introduction | chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Journal | Sources

At the Bay of Islands on 2 July 1827 Captain Peter Dillon (1788-1847) came upon a remnant of the Rosanna settlers. His Narrative was published in London in 1829. It was dedicated to the chairman and directors of the Honourable East India Company. Dillon described how:

The natives took me along a path…I found the inhabitants of a very neat hut, an English cooper and his wife, a native of New Zealand…[he] had been cooper’s mate to a whaler - left, ill…The cooper told us that he understood a company had been formed in England for the purpose of establishing a factory here and to procure spars, flax and the other productions of New Zealand. That for this purpose a ship and cutter belonging to the company arrived from England, under the command of their agent, Captain Herd, with mechanics of the descriptions most likely to promote the end in view. They consisted of ship-carpenters, sawyers, blacksmiths, and flax-dressers, and they had on board with them machines for sawing and flax-dressing. Captain Herd however disliked the appearance of the New Zealanders so much, and certainly, from his own account, he was perfectly justified in so doing, that he abandoned the expedition, and proceeded to Port Jackson, and on his arrival at Sydney such of the mechanics as desired it were discharged. Four of them returned to New Zealand, took up their lodgings witht the cooper and were now employed on the other side of the bay, by the missionaries established here, in repairing a small schooner that plies to New South Wales, and bring supplies for the missionary establishment…
We passed a little further along the beach, and came to another small cabin, inhabited by a blacksmith that belonged to Captain Herd’s expedition and settled here when it first touched at the islands. He is married to a New Zealand woman.

Dillon returned to the Bay of Islands on 9 November 1827:

I engaged two caulkers who resided on shore to make the necessary repairs (Poop deck being leaky, and admitted water onto our arms and bedding) and perform other jobs required on board. These men were part of the crew of the Rosannah, which was fitted out by a company in London to establish a factory in New Zealand, an account of the failure of which project has been [already] noticed.
The French navigator J.S. Dumont d’Urville (1790-1842) had been at the Bay of Islands early the same year. There he heard from missionary Henry Williams about the visit of Captain Herd. On 13 March 1827 Dumont d’Urville noted (Olive Wright’s translation):

The establishment that the Agricultural Society had tried to set up on the banks of the Shoukianga [Hokianga] river did not develop; it was abandoned after an expenditure of more than twenty thousand pounds on preliminary work…
A company had been formed with the modest title of “the New Zealand Flax Society” and had tried quite recently to found an establishment in these parts for large scale cultivation of Phormium tenax and the exploitation of timber for building. The new settlement consisted of seventy people under the direction of Mr Shepherd who by long residence in New Zealand was well fitted for the position.
The colonists were landed at Shouraki [Hauraki] Bay by Captain Herd and they first chose a site for the settlement which appeared to suit their aims; but hearing very soon afterwards that the natives had made a plot to attack them without any warning and carry off everything they had brought with them, the new settlers fled with all speed. Then they went to the shores of the Shouki Ang [Hokianga] where they stayed a few days to investigate the district. Finally, realizing that the alleged advantages of which so much had been said to them, in no way came up to their expectations they oncemore took their way back to New South Wales without ever having landed.
The previous December, while at Port Jackson on the eve of his second New Zealand visit, Dumont d’Urville had lunched with New Zealand missionary Samuel Marsden. Dumont recorded in his journal that several chiefs of the Cook Strait area had stayed with Marsden, notably Tippahi [Te Pehi Kupe] and Oroura.

Dumont also dined in Sydney at the house of Alexander McLeay (1767-1848), the new Colonial Secretary of New South Wales. Just that year arrived in the colony from London McLeay had been for many years secretary of the Linnean Society. He was also one of Thomas Shepherd’s “earliest friends.” At that December 1826 meeting in Sydney McLeay would no doubt have talked with Dumont d’Urville about the New Zealand Company settlers then in New Zealand.

In Sydney Dumont d’Urville’s communications with home were put together in a parcel, addressed to the French ambassador in London and taken to McLeay who, in the spirit of cooperation then operating among scientists and men of learning, undertook to have them sent to London on the Regalia.

Dumont d’Urville left Sydney soon after and passed through Cook Strait. Then, like Captain Herd six months earlier, he sailed along the east coast of the North Island. Like Captain Herd Dumont d’Urville also produced a chart of the Hauraki gulf. On it he included Pahii, Po-Nui, Ile Wai Heke [Waiheke Island], Wai tamata and Baie Shouraki [Hauraki Bay].

The travelling artist Augustus Earle (1793-1838) also met up with some of the Rosanna settlers. Earle sailed from Sydney in October 1827 with Captain Kent and arrived in the Hokianga at Rawene (he left New Zealand in April 1828). Up the Waihou river Earle:

found a party of men who had come out on the Rosanna, the vessel employed by the New Zealand Company. They were busily employed getting timber, sawing planks and making oars for the Sydney market. Patuone, the chief, seemed very proud of having them on his territory as it added to his power and consequence among the neigbouring chiefs.
Augustus Earle had been in Rio de Janeiro and Chile. In 1820 he took up residence in Lima, Peru, where he made a panoramic record of the blockade of the nearby port of Callao by the exiled British admiral Lord Thomas Cochrane (1775-1860), who will appear again in the Rosanna settlers story.

Another English wanderer was Edward Markham (1801-1865), who left Hobart Town on 7 February 1834 in the Brazil Packet (Captain Crow) and crossed the Hokianga bar on 18 February. Markham met:

Maclean who went out some ten years ago as carpenter when a New Zealand Company was formed in England, and they bought land which is theirs at the moment. They sent out numbers of people, under Capt Hird but with what object I cannot tell. The stores, which included flax machinery, were sold and the emigrants offered a passage home at the company’s expense.

Chapter 2.......

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