Answering the question, 'Where did I come from' ?

 

On my October travels to the South Island this year, on a clear, sunny day I walked through the sand hills south of Riverton, west of Bluff, to one of the most southern lookout points of the South Island. 

It was a lovely warm day, blue skies with Persil white clouds above.  The ocean beneath the sandhills was a deep azure blue with mild rippling waves.  I stood on the mound for some time and looked across the glorious blue water to the horizon and the unmistakable shape of Stewart Island.  An island many of my fellow New Zealanders have never set foot on. 

Not far from where I was standing there was a handsome, middle aged couple who were also enjoying the warmth of the day and admiring the awesome scene in front of us.  The lady turned to me and asked, “Have you ever been to Stewart Island?” 

“Yes,” I replied, “twice.”

“We went once,” she said, “not a lot there though.  Once was enough.” 

Part of my soul sunk a little at the comment, ‘not a lot there’.  I held my tongue as from my perspective it’s a glorious independent little island that has held onto its semi-isolation feel yet has kept up with all the modernisation that anyone needs when going there for a holiday.

I have not explored all of the island.  I will, one day.  I will return and with some good fortune may even be able to share this special place with others.

My first visit was many years ago;  Mr J and I planned to go visit merely to tick it off our ‘to do’ list of places in New Zealand we have been.  Stewart Island was one of only a few left on the list.

It was not until we had driven from Auckland to Wellington and spent a night’s rest with my little sister and her partner in their Wellington home that I learnt there was more to our trip of going to the island than to just ‘tick it off’ and say, “been there, done that.”

On learning of our plan to visit the island sister Tina casually mentioned that I should take a trip to the island's museum as she had been told there was information about the area our great-great grandfather and his wife had lived. 

Somewhere in my many decades of adulthood I had completely forgotten there had been any family ties with Stewart Island.

The moment she mentioned it the recollection neurons in my brain began to regurgitate the stories from my father about our family links to that land.  That sometime in the early 1800’s his great-grandfather and his family had lived, or more descriptively, survived living on Stewart Island.  My father had told me of how his great-grandfather, William Cook, who in the early 1820’s was living in Korerareka (now known as Russell) in the Bay of Islands with his wife Tiraha and their first born son, George, when he had been erroneously persuaded into sailing from that glorious area of the Bay of Islands and move temporarily to Stewart Island to begin building a 100 ton ship for future trading uses between New Zealand and Australia.

At that stage William Cook was well settled in the Bay of Islands, more by accident than by planning. In New Zealand in those early pre-settler times of 1818-1819 he had visited the Bay of Islands on ships from Sydney which were sailing to New Zealand to drop off sealers and whalers and to trade goods with the Northland Maori tribes – the usual cargo returning to Sydney being products of the whalers and sealers and timber for ship building and flax for the manufacture of rope.

On one such journey William had become very ill in Kororareka and the ship’s captain decided to not delay the ship’s return to Sydney so left William in the Bay of Islands in the care of the local missionaries.  William recovered, decided he would remain in the area and very soon had taken as his wife a whangai niece of Tamati Waka Nene, her name being Tiraha Papa Harakeke.  Tiraha being of Ngapuhi and Kapotai descent.  Tamati Waka Nene, being a noble Maori chief in the area meant the union of the two individuals was one of respectability to both the tangata whenua and the local missionaries and Europeans.  Indeed, I have learnt this was the first official interracial marriage between the Europeans and Maoris in New Zealand.  Married by Henry Williams in the Anglican church on the Paihia waterfront.

Within a short time the first born came along, to be eventually followed by twelve others over the next two decades.  As was common in those times, two did not survive.

William, a Battle of Waterloo veteran, was an Englishman who had departed Portsmouth, Great Britain in a ship bound for Australia, carrying prisoners who became the original Europeons of that land. 

Over the many decades, indeed it is now two centuries, there have been many descendants of William and Tiraha’s who believed that William was a direct descendant of James Cook, the unique explorer who had spent many journeys to New Zealand, naming many sites and mapping out the country.  It was in 1769 that James Cook first visited and when one looks at the navigational maps he so adeptly drew it makes one realise what a highly skilled and clever man he was.

Who would not want to be a descendant of such a renown explorer?

I visited the Russell Museum archives five years ago, accompanied by my older brother who had already spent some hours scouring through the amazing amount of historical records of the original Cook family.  Even among these papers there were notes relating to the family link to James Cook.  However, being the cynic I am, unless we had DNA from Cook, or written form of the gene tree, then I find it more fanciful than accurate of there being a direct link.

James Cook sailed from Portsmouth when departing for his trips to the Pacific, but he grew up in the northern areas of England.   When he was murdered in the Pacific he left behind a wife and two children who were living somewhere in England at that time.  Whilst we know William Cook departed the UK via Portsmouth, we can find no record of where William Cook’s childhood was spent or anything of his parentage.

Therefore, I shall claim no link to James Cook but proudly put my hand up when asked about William and Tiraha.

Once William had recovered from his illness that found him domicile in Korerareka he earned his living working as a carpenter working mostly on the many ships that came into the Bay of Islands and required repairs.  Indeed, the ship from which he sailed from Sydney on has his occupation listed as ‘shipwright’.  Shipwright being their term for carpenter, ships carpenter. 

Many of the ships coming to New Zealand at that time were carrying sealers and whalers to be left along various parts of New Zealand’s coastlines to capture and kill seals and whales for the by products they proffered.  Within a few years the sons of William turned to whaling as their main occupation. 

It was whaling that eventually put that particular Cook family forever into the country’s history books.  William and his sons had worked as carpenters in Korerareka but had also become skilled whalers.  It was three of William and Tiraha’s grandsons (George, William & Herbert) who, in 1893 established their whaling operations on the Raukaumangamanga peninsular in the Whangamumu Harbour.  The beautiful Whangamumu Harbour can easily be seen when walking the Cape Brett walk beginning north of Russell. 

This particular whaling station had quickly become renown for being the only one in the world that caught whales with nets, as opposed to spearing, and this station became Northland’s longest successful operational station, with three generations of Cook descendants manning it until approximately the late 1930’s. 

Meanwhile, from William and Tiraha, and their ten children and the next two centuries, the Cook family begat and grew considerably, exponentially. 

And here I am.  A proud Cook member. 

I’ll now link back to Stewart Island.  In 1826 William and Tiraha, plus seven other ‘carpenters’ and their wives from Kororareka were talked into sailing to Stewart Island by a ship’s Captain, William Stewart, to build a 100 ton boat for future whales and traders.  Captain Stewart had promised them he would take them there to settle, leaving them with six months of supplies and would return to Sydney to stock up on further supplies and return within six months.  He agreed to do this until the 100 ton boat was completed.  The group would then be sailed back to the Bay of Islands. 

William and Tiraha and their then only child, George, sailed with their compatriots to Stewart Island to carry out their agreed contract.  In April 1826 Stewart sailed them into the area which is now known as Cook's Arm.  Cook's Arm has for many years been mistakenly thought was named after Captain James Cook.  Not so.  It is  is named after the William Cook family and clearly obvious as the whole harbour area is known as Shipbuilders Cove.  

Captain Stewart who took them to the island bid farewell to them with the promise of returning with supplies, departed, never to return.  Indeed, he ended up in a Sydney jail, on what we would now call fraud charges.

There is a written account from 1825 from a John Boultbee who had sailed a ship into the area these abandoned families were in but stated ‘unfortunately we were unable to assist them’.

Boultbee wrote in his 1825 journal, “We found a shipwright named Cook and 8 men and 9 women from the Bay of Islands.  They had been greatly distressed for food and we were unfortunately unable to assist them.  Cook had engaged with the Captain Stewart at the Bay of Island to go to Pegasus to build a vessel of 100 tons burthen.  The party commenced working and sawing planks and had got the ship’s timbers all ready.  No relief came and when I came across them they were 12 months without seeing or hearing of Stewart.  The people had to look out, as well as they could, for such as they could get to eat – cockles, muscles & fern root.  The men looked lean and haggard but the women stood hunger well, and the fern root seemed to keep them in as plump a condition as if they had the best food to live upon.  It is remarkable how the New Zealanders (Maoris) can stand hunger.  I have seen them for 2 days with scarcely any thing to eat, and still retain their good humour.  Not so the Europeans, they invariably grow clamorous and quarrelsome. 

Cook has children; his eldest boy could write and spoke English very perfectly.” 

Boultbee had to leave William, Tiraha and their settlers but returned some months later and found they were living “most wretchedly” 

They had abandoned work on the 100 ton boat and begun work on a smaller craft of about “25 tons” to take them home to the Bay of Islands.  “They had no iron nails so used wooden pegs instead and the women has set to work cheerfully to make mats for sails and ropes of flax.”

In 1829 the group of settlers were asked to construct buildings and boats for the whaling station in an area now known as Preservation Inland.  This they did, returning to their original place to work on their schooner.

It wasn’t until sometime after 1833 that Cook and others finally completed their schooner (which ended up with it's own history) and departed Port Pegasus to return to the Bay of Islands.  From those original Cooks came the renown Bay of Islands Whangamumu Whaling Station.

I knew most of the history of the Cooks and Bay of Islands and the whaling station, but little of the above connection to Stewart Island. – despite recalling my father telling me William, Tiraha and others had been swindled into going to Stewart Island it seems I never absorbed the reasons why or any other facts.  Indeed, when my sister Tina reminded me of the link she too had little recollection of these facts but had been told by a friend of hers of the local museum in Oban, on Stewart Island that had a photo of our great, great grandfather.  Wow, thought I, how fascinating, the weird connection of travelling to Stewart Island and on the way accidentally learning things I never knew of those I descended from.

Tony and I arrived at Stewart Island after choosing to fly into the area rather than take the ferry boat.  We had been informed by others that the boat trip is regularly an upside-down affair with most trips having passengers vomiting over the sides, suffering from awful sea sickness.  We chose to go the more expensive, but less turbulent way.

How wrong that was.

The planes from Invercargill to Stewart Island are small and seemingly held together with zip ties and loose rivets.  The flight is only 15 to 20 minutes, but the same winds that create the horrendous waves for the ferries also create horrendous drops and turbulence for the very small aeroplanes above.  I thought I was going to die.  I thought it might be less painful to actually make myself die by jumping out of the emergency exit mid flight.  I was terrified.  The one hour ferry ride of vomiting seemed a far, far more pleasant option.

That aside, we landed at the Oban airstrip and were taken to the town. 

Whilst we waited for our accommodation to be ready we walked the few streets of Oban and came across the local café, a rustic café.  We enjoyed a superb coffee and toasted sandwich and noted the only other customer in the establishment.  Clearly a local resident, a man in his 30’s who spent his breakfast time concentrating on reading the mainland newspapers the aeroplane had delivered to the town.

As we rose to leave the café the newspaper reading gentleman passed polite pleasantries on where had we travelled from, why were we here and other usual general chit-chat quips we Kiwis so often exchange.

Tony informed the man we were staying only 3 days and were wanting to find the local museum as we had been informed there could be information there on some forefather of mine who had been reported as living there in the previous century.

The café man asked if we knew the name of the forefather, “Cook,” said Tony, “William Cook.”

With that the man reeled quite a conversation in telling me all he knew about William Cook, his wife, his family, his fellow shipbuilders, what they had been doing there, how, and where their actual living site was on the island – accessible by boat only.  I was enthralled.  Here we were, only just arrived on the island and the second person we meet (the first being the café owner) gives me all this information about my family history that I never knew about.   Turns out he was not a born local, had moved there some years earlier but enjoyed absorbing Stewart Island history and was well aware of Cook, Cooks Cove and their life there.

This was an unrealistic, almost illusory situation.

We enquired how we could get to the area those settlers had set up their homes in and the man informed us of the local tour boat who could accommodate such a trip.

The next day we motored, just Tony and I, plus the 3 crew on the tour boat, to Shipbuilders Cove, to Cooks Arm. 

I was still somewhat enamoured with what was happening.  So many times in our lives we have almost surreal events, this was one very big one for me.  How opportune for me to have all this happening.

Later that day we returned to our motel accommodation and sitting on a table in the motel room was a book, Stewart Island Explored, with a specific chapter ear marked, Chapter 5, The Shipbuilders’ Colony which had a photo of William and Tiraha.  I enquired with the motel’s owner how it had come to be in our room.  She informed me a local she knew had popped in earlier in the day and asked if it could be left for me to ‘borrow’ and read.  She gave me the man’s name and email address, he being our café acquaintance. 

I read the book, learnt my forebearers Stewart Island history, returned it to the man, purchased a copy from the local museum and have it sitting beside me now. 

So on that day in October, when the lady enquired if I had ever visited the island and then proclaimed “.. not a lot to do there.  Once was enough,” I smiled, said nothing and thought how nice it is for me to have such valuable family history in this country of ours and how I will visit again, maybe one day with my own off spring, and walk them through the trials and tribulations their great, great, great grandparents had on Stewart Island. 

Photos of Tiraha & William

Cooks Arm, Stewart Island

Whangamumu Whaling Station, Bay of Island.

Here ends the history lesson.