LOCAL NEWS
ROSS THORBY: CRUISING
ON LAND
The battle cry that reverberated around the world. So it was time for the final act in my tour around Northland, but before I turn Car-Lotta towards the south, I cannot leave without calling into one of the most famous and beautiful harbours in the North. Just a few minutes to the west of Tauranga Bay is the sheltered harbour of Whangaroa, home to one of the few surviving New Zealand townships featuring shops with old wooden shop-fronts, a pub and of course, a big game fishing club. It is also the site of one of New Zealand’s most infamous interactions between Maori and the early Europeans, and I wanted to learn more. In 1809 the brigantine “Boyd” had just arrived in Whangaroa Harbour with tension onboard. Purportedly, Te Ara, the son of a local chief, had been whipped by the captain for failing to carry out his duties. He had refused to work his voyage over the pond, claiming to be tohunga, and therefore sacred. The captain probably believed the fact should have been brought up before negotiating his working passage, not during it. Once word of his mistreatment reached his whanau on land, utu (revenge) was declared and the fate of the ship would be swift and violent.
Walter Wright, The Burning of the Boyd, Whangaroa Harbour, 1809
Luring the crew ashore on the pretext of a good time, a war party killed and devoured the landing party, then wearing their stolen clothes, set upon the remaining crew and passengers on board the vessel. During the looting that followed, a barrel of gun-powder was ignited, blowing up the ship and burning it to the waterline. The sudden exploding conflagration must have made the shoreside Maori think that the apocalypse had arrived. A visiting chief from the Bay of Islands, Te Pahi, attempted to rescue the sailors, but found only a few survivors still clinging to the rigging of the sunken ship; the cabin boy and three passengers including a baby and small child. In a tragic case of mistaken identity, Te Pahi was later attacked by British whalers who had sailed from England to exact revenge for the carnage. Mistaking him for the instigator rather than the rescuer, they attacked and destroyed his pa, killing a number of his Maori tribe. Te Pahi later died of his injuries sustained in the battle. Meantime, news of the Boyd circled the world and captured the interest of an English artist living in New Zealand called Walter Wright. Wright captured on canvas, an action that was to change the way the world was to see New Zealand. It became widely regarded as the “Cannibal Isles” with the reputation delaying the colonization of the country and resulting in a world-wide alert being issued to all sailors, the advice being “ .. avoid the area at all costs due to the ferocious nature of the 'natives', touch not that cursed shore lest you these cannibals pursue”. In contradiction to the previously held positive reviews - “... and the noble savages who inhabit these shores”. Wright’s painting was gifted to the Auckland Art Gallery through the Auckland Picture Purchase Trust in 1908, one hundred years after the incident and if you are lucky enough to view the piece, such is the raw telling of the story conveyed in the painting, that you cannot view it without feeling the presence of the exploding ship and contemplate the battle cry that reverberated around the world.
36 PONSONBY NEWS+ July 2022
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki gift of the Auckland Picture Purchase Trust in 1908
I found on the quiet and tranquil shores of Whangaroa harbour, a lone memorial to the Boyd, a rock with an inscription pointing towards where the ship still lies just offshore, a mess of burnt wood, copper and lumps of coal once destined for South Africa, lying now where it sank into its shallow grave. The harbour is once again tranquil and quiet. An oyster farm and a marina of expensive yachts and launches reach out into the turquoise waters and the surrounding landscape is still bountifully clad in native bush and unblemished beauty. The landscape is abundant in rocky sentinels piercing through the foliage of ancient rimu and kauri. Islands dot the myriad of inlets that make up the harbour, still unchanged from the time when their peaks were the territory of local iwi. The sleepy settlement of Whangaroa still retains the peace and tranquility of the old New Zealand we used to know, but delve beneath the surface and you can reveal the underbelly of our past where it lies, dissolving in the mud. (ROSS THORBY) PN
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