IMMIGRANT SHIPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 October 1942, Page 4

IMMIGRANT SHIPS

AUCKLAND CENTENARY VOYAGE FROM SCOTLAND. BIRTHS AND DEATHS AT SEA. A century ago on October 9 the Duchess of Argyle and the Jane Gifford, Auckland’s first two immigrant ships, dropped anchor in the Waitemata, some four months after leaving the Clyde. They brought 535 passengers, nearly all hardy Scots iolß whose descendants, numbering many thousands, have contributed much to the building of present-day New ZeaAuckland had been established as the capital of the colony in September, 1840, and two years later its population had grown to nearly 2000 by accretions from Great Britain, Australia, Port Nicholson and the Bay of Islands, but it was not until the middle of 1842 that any organised effort to send out settlers was made in the Homeland. , . „ , „ On June 10 the . ship Duchess of Argyle, 667 tons, Captain R. G. Tait, was towed out from the Tail of the Bank at Greenock, and six days later the barque Jane Gifford, 558 tons, Captain Paul, followed. The dimensions of both vessels are on record, and thev make a good gauge of the discomforts which emigrants in those days took as a matter of course. The Duchess of Argyle, 132 ft. long and 34ft. beam, carried 90 men, 90 women and 117 children under 14. The Jane Gifford, with a length of 120 ft. and beam of 30ft., had a complement of 82 men, 81 women and 75 children. Those were the figures at the end of the voyage, for on each vessel there were, by a coincidence, 17 births and eight deaths. The latter were nearly all of children, and due to measles.

INCIDENTS ON ARRIVAL. Mr Robert Graham, who later made his mark in Auckland as superintendent of the province and in many other Ways, has left a lively journal of the voyage in the Jane Gifford. It was mainly uneventful, except that a sailor was lost overboard at night, and an Irish passenger had two fist-fights with the ship’s doctor. The Duchess of Argyle was first to enter the Hauraki Gulf, but lost some hours on a sandbank, with the result that the other vessel anchored first. The weather was bad, with a high sea and much rain. There was no proper landing-place, and it was not until the next day that a few passengers got ashore, to be welcomed on the beach by friendly and talkative Maoris.

SCOTSMEN’S BRIDES. Single women were few in Auckland at that time, and two enterprising Scots bachelors put out to one of the ships in a dinghy with the deliberate purpose of finding wives. They succeeded before the passengers went ashore, and both marriages turned out excellently". To meet the sudden influx, the Government gave the male immigrants work in regrading Shortland Street and putting a stockade around the gaol paying married men 2s 6d ana single men Is 6d a day. However, this was not for long, as most of the new arrivals soon found work a. theii trades or took up land outside the town. They made excellent colonists, and at a jubilee reunion of nearly 70 of them in 1892 it was found that one couple had descendants of the fifth generation, while a number of otheis were great-grandparents. Among wellknown Auckland surnames which go back to the two ships are Tudchope, Dingwall, Laurie, Craig and Culpan.

occur in supplies of tin plate to the canning factories. The development of _ meat dehydration in the Dominion is some security against any untoward difficulties which the meat industry may be subjected to during the period of the war, and it is possible that the experience gained will enable the product to be improved to the point where it will find a limited application in the world s markets after the cessation of hostilities.