Plea for Colonization.

Though the limits for the Southern Whale Fishery had been extended by legislation, “vessels could not proceed further than 51° E.; this still kept New Zealand and New Zealand sealing under the domain of the East India Company.” Enderby whaling ships, however, came to New Zealand as early as 1794.

In 1797 the Board of Trade “considered

(D. McMillan. photo.)
The Christchurch-Greymouth Express crossing the viaduct at Broken River, South Island, New Zealand.

a petition of the Merchant Adventurers of the Southern Whale Fishery for an extension of their limits,” and in the following year this request was granted. Nevertheless, the remaining restrictions were irksome, and in 1801, Samuel Enderby and Alexander Champion “secured a further extension which opened the whole Southern Ocean for fishing, provided the vessels delivered their journals to the Court of the Directors of the East India Company on their return to England. Thus the New Zealand seal trade became free to British subjects as to Foreigners.” Raven, it will be remembered, had traded under a special license.

More and more whalers came to hunt in the waters of New Zealand, “and as they frequently called at Sydney a traffic grew up between New South Wales, page 30 the South Sea Islands, and New Zealand,” where the favourite meeting place was the Bay of Islands.

Many of the Enderby whaling vessels were engaged in discovery as well as in hunting; and in August, 1806, Captain Abram Bristow, master of the “Ocean”—owned by Samuel Enderby—when sailing south of New Zealand, discovered the Auckland Islands; so named after Lord Auckland, a friend of Bristow's father. Bristow, at this time, did not land; but in October of the following year he returned to the islands and took formal possession of them on behalf of the Crown.

As time went on, Samuel Enderby and Sons, with other English whaling firms, became alarmed about the conduct of the Europeans on the New Zealand coast, and tried to persuade the British Government to organise a settlement and make New Zealand a colony. “In one letter,” says Dr. W. J. Dakin, “they pointed out that the coast of Australia was not only too far from the New Zealand coast for help should a ship meet with damage or her crew become ill, but undesirable, too.”

Apt at grasping new ideas, the firm of Enderby and Sons manufactured rope from New Zealand flax, and thereafter used no other kind of rope for the whale lines on their vessels. They often employed Maoris; some as seamen, some as harpooners, and in general found them to be good, steady men; two Maoris were in their service for nine years.

So the Enderby firm moved forward, their ships sailing over the whole Pacific, from North to South, wherever whales were to be found.

(To be continued.)

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