MAORI WRECKING IN 1825.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 69, 23 October 1862, Page 6 (Supplement)

MAORI WRECKING IN 1825.

After resting two days at Kararoa, we again started for Tara makau, the chief settlement of the tribe, all the people of the village accompanying us. A ear the Mokihimu river we had for many days found pieces of Baltic deal and E nglish oak, copper iastened, until it became evident that some large vessel had been wrecked somewhere in the vicinity; at last, near Mautoria, we found the broken masts and main top of a ship that must have been of about -100 tons burden. On our way, now, the natives told us of the loss of this vessel. She had anchored near Cape Eoulweather for water, and the captain had landed with some of the crew, when a heavy westerly gale prevented their return on board, and the short-handed vessel, in endeavoring to beat olf the coast, was embayed and wrecked where wo bad seen her—some twenty-five miles from where the captain was landed. The crew, thus divided, endeavored by a breastwork to defend themselves against the natives, but alter a few days bad to surrender, when they were all killed and eaten, save two, of whom the captain was one. These evaded the native pursuit, and without provisions and barefooted, walked—chiefly at night—along the rocky coast that we had passed towards Cook’s Straits, in the hope of reaching the whaling station at Cloudy Ifoy, -100 miles distant by the path. The, west coast natives followed their footsteps as far as Cape Farewell in hope of capturing them, but were continually chided. Passing Massacre Bay the two fugitives actually reached Totara mil beach, round Separation Point, where the local natives surprised and killed them. Coidd they have told theirtale,nonai'rativeof toil, endurance and courage could have exceeded theirs in melancholy interest. r lhe natives described bales of wool as having come ashore from the wreck ; she was probably a vessel from A an Dioman’s Land on her way to itngland.* —A lisit to the Greenstone Country in IS K>, by C. lleaphy, Esq., in Xo. 3 of the New Zealand Magazine. * The ship Rifleman left Hobarton about 1825, bound to England, and was never afterwards heard of.