SHIPBOARD DIARY

JOAN M C CRACKEN

DESCRIPTION Page 8 from ‘Diary from leaving England Octr 8th 1864 to November 8th 1866’

MAKER / ARTIST William Webster Hawkins (1842–1918)

REFERENCE qMS-0934_008 William Hawkins’ diary remains an entertaining account of the long sea voyage to the ‘cloud’ that was Aotearoa, and of his time as a tutor with the Tetleys in Kekerengu. It was purchased by the Turnbull Library in 1970, along with a separate sketchbook. The diary has been digitised and can be read on the National Library website.

‘Hurrah! Land sighted abt 12 noon today…The lookout on the foremast saw it but said he thought it was a cloud.’

After 102 days at sea, 22-year-old William Webster Hawkins (1842–1918), who had boarded the wooden sailing ship Wild Duck in October 1864, was delighted to see the cloud that was Aotearoa New Zealand. Having graduated from Cambridge University that year, Hawkins had been contracted by Joseph and Elizabeth Tetley to tutor their three young sons in New Zealand. Travelling with the family, he wrote in his journal on most days during the voyage.

The Wild Duck made regular voyages to New Zealand, bringing settlers and goods, usually under the command of Captain Thomas Bishop. On this trip, Hawkins was one of 15 cabin passengers, with another 46 people in steerage. The lovestruck captain and his bride appear in the diary: ‘It is very delightful for the passengers the Captain being newly married and having his wife on board as they “bill & coo”…How will it be after two or three voyages!’

Many migrants en route to New Zealand were keen writers of diaries, and the Turnbull holds numerous examples of these. Most were kept by cabin passengers, like Hawkins, who could afford the paper and pens required to keep such a record, and who had the space in which to write. Few steerage passengers or crew had these luxuries.

Hawkins’ leather-bound journal is written in ink, legible but with many smudges and crossings-out. One imagines that the movements of the ship made writing quite difficult at times. It is special to this author for its pictures and amusing captions.

Hawkins regularly records the ship’s position, the weather and the distance covered each day (from 18 miles to 248 miles). He also documents the activities of his fellow cabin passengers and the crew, including the discomforts of shipboard life, the boredom and frayed tempers, the games and rituals. Sea sickness was a terrible problem: ‘My stomach and bowels are very obstinate.’

It was a relief on 18 January 1865 when the ship anchored in Port Nicholson (Wellington Harbour): ‘The day we got in the wind was blowing very strong & raising the dust a good deal, but we were informed the wind was a trifle to what it is sometimes.’

Hawkins continued to write and sketch during the three years he lived at Kekerengu in Marlborough with the Tetleys. Upon completing his contract, he returned to England and commenced a lifelong career as a Church of England minister.