WHALER TO PASTORALIST
THE WHALING JOURNAL OF CAPTAIN W. B. RHODES, edited by C. R. Straubel; Whitcombe & Tombs, price 18/6. ILLIAM BARNARD RHODES, chief founder of the fortunes of the Rhodes family in New Zealand, pioneer pastoralist, merchant prince in Wellington, and Member of Parliament, was originally a sea captain. In 1836, though he had no experience in that specialised work, he accepted command of a whaling ship sailing from Sydney, which took him to New Zealand waters and South Sea Islands. Rhodes left a journal of this two years’ whaling cruise. C. R. Straubel had nearly finished editing this, and appendices relating to the ship’s service, when he found that Dr. Robert McNab . had been working on the manuscript when he died in 1917. Mr. Straubel appropriately dedicates this volume to Dr. McNab as the pioneer historian of whaling in New Zealand. He confirms Dr. McNab’s note that the journal was the only known reasonably complete account of a whaling cruise based on Sydney. Disappointingly few whales were taken, so officers and men, who, according to custom, drew no wages, got little as their share of the proceeds. Rhodes
left the sea and found fortune in New Zealand farming and trading. He had a lot of trouble with his crew, fisifig to mutiny, due to the crew's mistrust of his ability to make good hauls. To many readers the principal highlights in this daily record, when so often nothing happens, will be calls at ports. Kororareka, for example, was visited in those lurid days before Waitangi, atid a hot spot it proved, Capably filling in the story in his introduction, Mr. Straubel explaitis the main points in the industry and the drawing power of New Zealand waters at that time. This is a valuable relic froin a past distant as our history goes.
A.
M.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 817, 25 March 1955, Page 12
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306WHALER TO PASTORALIST New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 817, 25 March 1955, Page 12
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