Te Morenga’s Thames Expedition.

It has been mentioned that Te Morenga’s expedition returned to the Bay on the 2nd March, 1820, from Mercury Bay and Tauranga. Cruise also learnt that Korokoro had returned two months before, or in January, 1820, from the Thames, where he had created devastation, and Marsden notes in his diary that he, with Tui, when at Coromandel, visited several bays where many people recently had lived, but all the pas had been destroyed. One place was shown where the beach had been covered with page 155 dead bodies, and the tribe living there had been almost exterminated. This expedition was undertaken by Korokoro and Tui (says Marsden), because the son of Kaipo, otherwise called “Old Benny,” had on a visit to the Thames been bewitched by those people. Tui went down to fetch him, but he died on the way home. Hence Korokoro and Kaipo’s expedition.