The Crew List of the Whaleship Mary Ann

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 28, 1 January 1995, Page 79

Rhys Richards

The Crew List of the Whaleship Mary Ann

A Link to the Oldest Pākehā Family in New Zealand

Introduction vJn recent estimates, at least 5000 logbooks and journals which were kept on American whaling voyages, most of them to the South Seas, still survive today. With about 14,000 American whaling voyages known so far, this is equivalent to about one logbook or journal for every three voyages. Most of these American records, especially those with voyages to the Pacific, have been indexed and are readily available to New Zealand researchers on several miles of microfilm made by the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau project, with copies deposited at the Alexander Turnbull Library.

By comparison, very few records survive of the extensive British whaling in the South Seas last century, for which a comparable estimate of British logbooks and journals is under 40. 2 In his invaluable guide Ships Employed in the South Seas Trade 1775-1861 , A. G. E. Jones has extracted thousands of references, mainly from the London newsletter Lloyds List. This confirms that the British whaling trade was very substantial and that the history of British whaling in the South Pacific remains largely unknown. Clearly, though, the whalers played an important role across the Pacific, in places as far afield as New Zealand, Hawaii, Samoa, Chile, Kamchatka, and Alaska, particularly in

introducing the local inhabitants, or 'natives', if not to 'Western civilisation', at least to Western trade. Consequently, every find of a new source of information about British whaling is of considerable value to Pacific research. One possible source that does not seem to have been given close attention yet is the Crew Lists that British captains were required by law to keep throughout their voyages. This article reviews one such Crew List which is held by the Alexander Turnbull Library. Though quite slight, it is nevertheless highly informative about one British whaling voyage and about an early New Zealand pioneer. The Crew List This Crew List is a printed ledger in which, after the addition in ink of a few specifics, the title page reads as follows: A Muster Roll, or Account of the Crew, of The Ship Mary Ann William G. Hingston, Master. Belonging to The Port of London. Required by an Act of 4th and sth William IV. cap. 52, "For the Relief and Support of Sick, Maimed, and Disabled Seamen, and the Widows and Children of such as shall be Killed, Slain, or Drowned in the Merchant Service," —to be kept by every Master or Commander of any Ship or Vessel belonging to any subject of his Majesty, With an Abstract of the Act. London: Printed and Published by J. Robins and Sons, 57, Tooley Street, Southwark, and Sold at all Navigation Warehouses, Chartsellers, &c. &c. Thereafter, four double pages bear identical headings with identical inked-in specifics as follows: A list of account of the crew, (including Masters and apprentices) of the ship Mary Ann of the port of London whereof William G Hingston is Master at the period of her departure from the Port of London in the United Kingdom, and on her return to the Port of London in the United Kingdom; and also of those who have joined the ship at any time during the voyage. Across each double page, entries have been made in ink under the following printed headings: 'Christian and Surnames of Men; Age; Place of Birth; Quality [i.e. rank or occupation]; Place and Time of Entry; Place and Time of Discharge or Leaving

the Ship', and several other columns used only occasionally and mainly to record any assets left behind by a deceased or deserting crew member. This list thus provides a general description of the 31 original crewmen, plus 56 more who joined the Mary Ann en route as replacements 'at Newzeeland', at Tonga and Samoa, and at Sydney. In total, this modest list on only four pages portrays a surprisingly comprehensive record of a South Seas whaling cruise at a time when the British element was at its peak. In the following chronological account, a few scraps of supporting evidence have been included as indicated, but in essence the narrative is drawn primarily from this Crew List. The crew When William G. Hingston became master of 'the Mary Ann in London on 29 August 1835, he signed on 30 men as his crew. There were three other officers and a surgeon named Charles Jones Bowater. Two of this original crew were listed in the 'Quality' column as 'boatsteerers', which suggests that with the officers also in charge of whaleboats, the Mary Ann probably manned four five-oared whaleboats. Both the cooper and the carpenter were assisted by 'mates', while there was one cook and one steward. The remainder of this original crew of 31 consisted of eight 'seamen', eight 'ordinary seamen', and two apprentices. The latter were aged 16 and 17; only the captain, first mate, and carpenter were over 30 years old, and the average age of the whole crew was only just over 23 J 4 years. Of the original complement of 31 men, over half (18) were English by birth, with two each from Wales and Ireland and one Scot. Only eight were non-British foreigners three lascars from India, three from Senegal, a carpenter from Hanover, and an American boatsteerer. The voyage out TheMaryAnn was in the mid-South Atlantic on 6 November 1835 when the youngest apprentice was 'killed by falling from the masthead'. At auction, his clothes and any other personal effects in his sea chest realised a pathetic £4 135. Od. The second and only other fatality occurred on 20 January 1836 in the Tasman Sea about 300 miles west of Auckland. The 'sale of clothing' of the third mate brought £27 os. od., which was recorded similarly, presumably for payment at the end of the voyage in the event of any claims from his family, creditors, or heirs. The cause of this fatality is not shown, but it might well have been during a whaling mishap with an inexperienced crew, as theMaryAnn had already taken 100 barrels of sperm oil when she visited the Bay of Islands from 17 March 1836. 4 At the Bay of Islands, a plague of desertions began. The first to escape the squalor and tedium of a whaling fo'castle was the steward, the holder of what was often

considered the most menial and despised position on a whaleship; Henry Hadden of Surrey ‘deserted at Newzeeland 18 March 1836’. He was followed in April by the oldest crewman, the German carpenter; by John Jury, an apprentice aged 17 from London; by the carpenter’s mate, Thomas Russell from Sunderland; and by three seamen, two of whom were English boys aged 17 and 18, while the third, from Senegal, was Francis Williams, aged 22. Here as elsewhere throughout the Crew List, ‘None’ was entered in the column for ‘What Clothes or other effects have been left onboard [by] Deceased or Discharged Person’ —though probably few deserters took away any more personal possessions than their clothes!

Their places, and more, were taken by ten men who ‘joined at New zeeland 12 April 1836’. One was a boatsteerer from Yarmouth, aged 29, but in age the other nine, all ‘seamen’, averaged just under 27 years. The origins of these young men ‘on the beach’ at the Bay of Islands in early 1836 were notably diverse: Only three were English, with one Scot and one Irishman, plus one each from Norway, France, Bravo, and St Nicholas (the latter two both in the Cape Verde Islands), while last on the list was ‘Wm Morgan’ who, since he was bom inNew Zealand in 1814, was either a Maori or of mixed blood. Of these ten men signed on in the Bay of Islands, four were discharged there thirteen months later, three deserted en route, and only three remained with the ship till its return to London.

From New Zealand, the Mary Ann evidently cruised north, through the major sperm whaling grounds around the Kermadec Islands, and on past Tonga to the Samoas, where one of the men signed on at New Zealand was ‘discharged [at the] Navigators 12 August 1836’. He was probably sick, or otherwise unable to do his duty. A week later, another man deserted there. Further evidence of this visit occurs in the logbook kept on the American whaler L C Richmond of Bristol, Rhode Island, which ‘spok eMaryAnn of London, out 11 months, with 500 barrels of oil, lying under the [lea of the] island of Survey [Savaii]’. 5

From the Samoas, the Mary Ann evidently turned south to Tonga, where on 21 September, ‘at Vavao’, another black seaman from Senegal, curiously named ‘Aopedell Joe’, deserted, as did a seaman who had signed on at New Zealand. Two replacements taken on at Vava’u were from London and Gibraltar. Again, another source mentions this visit briefly: On that day, Rev. Daniel Wheeler wrote ‘This morning the Mary Ann of London, south-sea-man, Flingston master, sailed for the whaling grounds. Sundry [Christian] tracts were furnished for the crew, also a French testament for a native of France [Anthony Jacob].’ A few days later, however, Wheeler purchased one of these tracts from a Tongan. Wheeler said charitably that it had been stolen, but he also implied obliquely that it may have been sold by a crewman for goods or favours! 6

The Mary Ann then made an extended cruise either in the central Pacific or perhaps, as was common then, north until ‘off the coast of Japan’. After eight months, the Crew List recorded the Mary Ann at the Bay of Islands in May 1837. Five of the

men who had signed on there 13 months earlier were discharged ‘at New zeeland’ on 16 May 1837, and in June so too were two of the original crew.

Entries in the London shipping newspaperL/qy<A List state that th eMaryAnn was in the Bay of Islands on 6 May with a handsome cargo of 1550 barrels of [sperm] oil, and sailed ‘on a cruise’ on 16 June with 1400 barrels. 7 Perhaps their oil had been restowed and recalculated, or perhaps this discrepancy of 150 barrels had been bartered for supplies. Since the crew would be paid by lays a lay was a small share of the voyage’s profits rather than wages, however, it is most likely that this 150 barrels was shipped home by a cooperative fellow captain whose own ship was not quite full. A comprehensive list of shipping arrivals and departures at the Bay of Islands shows that while the Mary Ann lay there from 6 May to 16 June, there were then in port four other London whaleships, five from the United States, three from Sydney, and three Australian traders. 8

Evidently, after seven of the crew had left, Captain Hingston was again concerned his vessel was undermanned, as in June 1837 he reshipped four of the men who had previously served just over a year with him, and he took on four more hands. Again, these replacements were a very mixed lot. They averaged almost 27 years of age, and their birthplaces were shown as London, Valparaiso, New York, Gibraltar, Mowee, Cork, and Bravo, while the last was ‘A Redy, 25, Newzeeland, ordinary seaman’. These newcomers did not remain on board long seven had left within six months and only one remained for an honourable discharge at New Zealand in July 1838 when the Mary Ann returned, from parts unknown, after another cruise of 13 months.

Meanwhile, Sydney port records show that the whaleship Mary Ann of London, a large 396-ton ship under Captain Hingston, arrived there from the whale fishery on 5 December 1837, 28 months from home with 1800 barrels of oil. She left for the sperm whale fishery, ‘with stores’, on 5 January 1838. 9 The Crew List reveals that this visit to Sydney was marred by a exodus of 15 of her crew. On 3 December, two particularly valuable men from the original crew, the Scots cooper and the English boatsteerer, were ‘taken out of ship by police’, and the Hawaiian ‘George White’ and an Irish seamen were ‘taken out by authorities’. A check through contemporary newspapers in Sydney has provided no explanation for these serious losses.

Later, three seamen were discharged and seven more deserted, including two of the original crew who had by then served 2 8 months, plus an American who had j oined at ‘the Navigators [Samoa]’ 16 months earlier, and three seamen who had signed on at New Zealand seven months earlier, including ‘A Redy, of Newzeeland’. Their desire to leave the discomfort and boredom of a whaling cruise must have been very strong for them to thus abandon their pay at the first ‘civilised’ port the Mary Ann visited, particularly while they would be very likely to be detected there and imprisoned as deserters.

The Mary Ann was now yet again seriously undermanned, so Captain Hingston was obliged to sign on 18 new men at Sydney. Some evidently obtained his

agreement to work their passage and to be discharged later at New Zealand. Again, the newcomers were a polyglot lot. Only five were English, two were Scots, and one was bom in France. Alex Dean and Gabel King were boatsteerers from Brava and St Nicholas, and the steward was also a black man from Cape Verde, bom on Brava. John Nicholas was bom in Guam, Harry Williams in the Sandwich Islands [Hawaii], and five seamen were bom in New Zealand ‘Ned New Zealander, Langle, John Bull, Harry Park, and Sam’. Presumably these Maori had been left at Sydney by other whalers, or had deserted whalers there, and wanted a short contract to take them home. Of all the 18 new hands, only three Londoners stayed with the ship till she eventually returned home.

The Mary Ann cmised on unspecified sperm whaling grounds from February to 29 July 1838, when she was again reported at the Bay of Islands. Having taken a further 500 barrels in only five months, she at last had a handsome cargo totalling 2300 barrels of sperm oil. 10 The Crew List provides no indication whether the men who were discharged en route were paid for their services in cash or kind. Indeed, the fifteen men who were discharged at the Bay of Islands on 30 July 1838 may well have received little if anything for their seven months’ profitable labour, other than their free passages from Sydney!

Also on 30 July, probably by prior agreement, six men who had previously served short contracts were reshipped for London. Six weeks later, however, while the Mary Ann still lay at the Bay of Islands preparing for the long voyage home, one, Walter Izard, thought better of it and deserted to remain in New Zealand. In September, seven more men were signed on for London. Five were Englishmen, one was from New York, and one, rather to my amazement, was 'Aneane', born in 'New S. Wales'. What this aboriginal whaler was doing in New Zealand, and what he later did in London, are of course unknown, but he typifies the diverse origins of the human flotsam and jetsam washed up 'on the beach' at the Bay of Islands. As will be noted later, Captain Hingston took this opportunity to buy land at the Bay of Islands. Well before his departure on 24 September 1838, he had clearly decided that he would return to New Zealand. Since there were no further desertions recorded in the Crew List, the Mary Ann probably did not stop en route home round Cape Horn. She had thus completed a circumnavigation of the globe when she reached London on 1 March 1839. After a long voyage of 41 months, but returning with a cargo of at least 2300 barrels of sperm oil, worth at the high prices prevailing that year about £ 15,000, theMaryAnn probably paid a very good profit to her owners, her captain, and her crew. Captain William George Cornelius Hingston The early career of Captain William G. C. Hingston is unknown, but a letter among the Hingston family papers in the Turnbull Library implies that he made a cruise in

the Sarah and Elizabeth well before 1830. Mission records show that a Captain Gardner brought the Mary Ann into the Bay of Islands in April 1826, and Hingston may well have been in the crew. Similarly, he was probably part of the crew of the Mary Ann when, in February 1828, Captain Barnabas Gardner, a veteran in the New Zealand whaling trade, sheltered Augustus Earle and his party from tribal fighting at the Bay of Islands. He was presumably the 'Captain Hingston' who captained the Admiral Cockburn on a cruise from May 1831 to May 1835 which included visits to the Bay of Islands in February and March 1833, and in March 1834. 1 As noted above, during the voyage of the Mary Ann from August 1835 to March 1839, Captain William G. Hingston visited the Bay of Islands in March and April 1836, from April to June 1837, and from July to September 1838. He was clearly using the Bay of Islands as a regular provisioning depot, and a suitable spot to allow his weary crew some limited shore leave. Evidently he liked what he saw, as in September 1838 he bought several pieces of land there. Among the Hingston family papers are several letters which refer to his land purchases. One describes land south of the Kerikeri River auctioned on 20 September 1838, and refers to a purchase deed signed by Henry Day and seven named Maori chiefs on 15 March 1837 and witnessed by Thomas Wing and John Blenkinsopp. Another, signed on 1 October 1836 by Henry Day and Kaitane, was for the island of Motupepe at the mouth of that river. A third appears to be a deed of sale for a land purchase by 'John Wright, master of the schooner Active' 1 of the Church Missionary Society on 20 July 1831. Two of the four chiefs signed with a representation of their facial moko, and another signed with Gilbert Mair to witness the transaction. A separate letter in answer to a query about land boundaries is from Mrs Alicia Ross in Hokianga to Captain Wright on 27 February 1839. It concludes 'I hope Mrs Wright and the Misses Featherston are well'. With the Crew List is a letter written much later by M. J. Murray which records: 'William George Cornelius Hingston was born in London May 6th 1802 ... married Jane Featherston at the Bay of Islands in December 1840 ... and died at his residence Wairoa, Bay of Islands, on September 19th 1891.' Nine of their children and their birthdates are listed, so it is reasonable to assume that many descendants remain from this large pioneer family. Captain William Hingston (senior) One thing leads to another. The extent of the information about the cruise of the Mary Ann revealed by this four-page Crew List led in turn to a search for more information about Captain William G. Hingston. It seems that the links with New Zealand he began in the 1830 s had been preceded a generation earlier by another Captain William Hingston who, family records show, was his uncle, and by two more Captains Hingston who were his father and his brother. They need to be considered one by one.

Captain W illiam Hingston (senior) was the master of the convict transport Hillsborough when it made its infamous ‘ death voyage ’, losing a third of its 300-odd convicts before they arrived at New South Wales in July 1799. 14 There Hingston met the newly emancipated ex-convict and future colonial entrepreneur Simeon Lord. They purchased, nominally as joint owners, a Spanish prize brought from Lima which was judiciously renamed the Hunter after the infant colony’s governor. They then conspired together to circumvent the Honourable East India Company’s monopoly on trade in ‘the Eastern seas’ by sending the Hunter to India for a cargo of spirits and other goods that could be sold at high profit at Sydney.

An agreement and ship’s articles survive which show that Hingston was instructed to complete his cargo of whale oil and sealskins with timber from the Thames River in New Zealand. Unfortunately, very little is known of this voyage, except that the Hunter left Sydney in October 1799, arrived at Thames leaking, uplifted spars and timber, and deposited at least four escaped convicts.

The Hunter arrived at Calcutta in the latter half of 1800. At first, the Company officials did not intervene, as the arrival of a prize of war was no breach of their monopoly, so long as the ship was sold with her cargo. When, however, Hingston began loading a cargo of spirits for a return to Sydney, and when suspicions were aroused that 23 convict ‘stowaways’ had been brought to Calcutta illegally from New South Wales, Hingston was arrested. He lied persuasively that his voyage had the ‘immediate approbation’ of the vessel’s namesake, Governor Hunter, as the new colony badly needed supplies. Not only was Hingston then freed, along with the vessel, but he was also issued with a permit for the export of all items not previously prohibited as exports. Later, however, through some miscalculations in his business dealings, Hingston was unable to retain his credit with the Calcutta merchants, and

he seems to have sold the ship and disappeared with the proceeds. It can be speculated that, having cash to remit to Simeon Lord in Sydney, Hingston had ample resources and was free to return to London where he was recorded living in 1803 and 1804. Captain John Hingston Hingston is not a common name among the captains of the British vessels employed in the whaling and other South Seas trades between 1775 and 1861. Nevertheless, another Captain Hingston, the earlier William's brother John, is also recorded as having visited New Zealand during this very early period. John or Jonathan Hingston (like the others, sometimes incorrectly called Ingston or Kingston) was the master of the 235-ton London whaleship Elizabeth and Mary, carrying 24 men and ten guns. She was first reported at New Zealand in March 1805. The Elizabeth and Mary arrived at Sydney from New Zealand in September that year with 800 barrels of sperm oil, and left only eleven days later, 'for New Zealand and home'. In November 1808, Captain John Hingston arrived at Sydney in the London whaleship Speke. He had brought from England Matara, a son of the Bay of Islands chief Te Pahi. Matara spent some time in Sydney before returning home on the City of Edinburgh, which stayed at the Bay of Islands for nearly twelve weeks immediately prior to the massacre of the crew of the Boyd, which was burnt at Whangaroa early in December 1809. One of the vessels that took part three months later in some indiscriminate retaliation for that massacre was the Speke under John Hingston. In the interim, before she next visited Sydney in September 1809, the Speke had taken only 30 tons of sperm oil, but also 150 tons of right whale oil. Though she left Sydney in November to return to right whaling in the Derwent, that was outside the right whaling season in Tasmania, and as noted above she was back at New Zealand by March 1810. (It may be as well to note here in parenthesis that these two Captains Hingston are not to be confused with Captain Higton or Highton who left Sydney in 1812 in the Isabella and was wrecked on the Falkland Islands. Nor are they the same as Captain Hindson, whose whaling cruise in the Cape Packet from 1833 to 1835 included visits to Sydney and to the Bay of Islands while Captain W. G. Hingston was at sea on the Mary Ann. ) Captain 'J. W.' Hingston Two more Hingstons appear in British and Pacific whaling records for the next generation. 'Mr J .W. Hingston, a very pleasant young gentleman' was given a letter of introduction by the Rev. G. Pritchard in Tahiti on 6 January 1827. This was probably W. G. Hingston's elder brother, then aged 28, who was, presumably, the

unspecified 'Captain Hingston' who captained the London whaleship Cyrus on a voyage to Timor from May 1830 to October 1833. 23 His next voyage, from May 1835, was his last, as in July 1836, after a visit of three months recoopering their 1600 barrels of sperm oil, his ship, the Falcon, 'drifted ashore at Ascencion [Ponape]; and was wrecked, with master and five crew murdered by natives. About 500 barrels of oil was recovered and brought home.' 24 A very short account of this 'Wreck of the ship Falcon, Captain J W Hingston,' was written in 1890 by W. B. (William Bruce) Hingston, the youngest brother of the deceased —and of W. G. C. Hingston. A copy is now held in the Alexander Turnbull Library. Conclusion Most of the above was written in 1991, well before contact was made, in 1995, with descendants of W. G. C. Hingston, who include a Maori Land Court judge and several prominent Maori and pakeha farmers. Their records, including a family tree for John Hingston (senior) and his wife Elizabeth Mary Bruce, clarified and confirmed the relationships since included above. With these family sources, there now seems good grounds for nominating the descendants of Captain William G. C. Hingston as 'the pakeha family with the longest connection with New Zealand'. For, from the above discussion, it seems that W. G. C. Hingston's uncle William visited in 1799, his father John visited in 1805 and 1809-10, and W. G. C. himself arrived in 1833 if not several years earlier. Moreover, William G. C. Hingston returned, and gave up the sea to live at Wairoa in the Bay of Islands, where he remained a pioneer settler, and a family patriarch, for over fifty more years. That such an extraordinary claim has emerged from a close examination of a Crew List of only four double pages suggests that any other surviving Crew Lists could well provide a new fertile source for further probings into New Zealand's whaling heritage and our early pakeha history.

Correction: In William Main’s article ‘ “The lanthom that shews tricks” ’ in the Turnbull Library Record 27 (1994), 45-54, it was incorrectly stated that Vicesimus Lush was a teacher by profession. The author has subsequently been advised that Lush was in fact an Anglican minister, and we wish to apologise for this error.

Turnbull Library Record 28 (1995), 79 —90

References 1. See S. C. Sherman, The Voice of the Whaleman (Providence, R. 1., 1965), and S. C. Sherman, et al., Whaling Logbooks and Journals, 1613-1927: An Inventory of Manuscript Records in Public Collections (New York, 1986). 2. S. G. Brown, 'List of Collections of Logbooks and Journals of Voyages of British Whaling Vessels' (unpublished paper, Sea Mammal Research Unit, British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, 1979). 3. Alexander Turnbull Library, Hingston Family Papers, Wellington, MSS 43. 4. A. G. E. Jones, Ships Employed in the South Seas Trade 1775-1861 (Canberra, 1986), p. 111. 5. Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Logbook in the Essex Institute, Salem, PAMBU film 206. 6. D. Wheeler, Extracts from the Letters and Journal of Rev Daniel Wheeler during a Visit to the Islands of the Pacific, Van Diemen 's Land and New South Wales (London, 1839), p. 56.

7. Jones, pp. 116-17. 8. R. Richards and J. Chisholm, Bay of Islands; Shipping Arrivals and Departures 1803-1840 (Paremata, 1992). 9. Sydney Herald, 7 December 1837 and 15 January 1838. 10. Jones, p. 122; Sydney Gazette, 16 October 1838. 11. B. R. Johnson, London, pers. comm. 12. Augustus Earle, Narrative of a Residence in New Zealand; Journal of a Residence in Tristan da Cunha, edited by E. H. McCormick (London, 1966), p. 139. 13. Jones, 1986, pp. 97-98, 102; Richards and Chisholm. 14. F. C\une,Boundfor Botany Bay: Narrativeofa Voyage in 1798 aboard the Death ShipHiMsborougb. (Sydney, 1964), pp. 40-48. 15. D. R. Hainsworth, The Sydney Traders (Melbourne, 1972), p. 65. 16. See Jones; see H.Morton, 'lndex, Australian Newspapers and New Zealand Whaling 1803-1852' (unpublished index, University of Otago, 1985). 17. R. McNab, From Tasman to Marsden; a History of Northern New Zealand from 1642 to 1818 (Dunedin, 1914), p. 101. 18. J. S. Cumpston, Shipping Arrivals and Departures, Sydney, 1788-1825 (Canberra, 1964), p. 55. 19. McNab, on pp. 120 and 140, has, incorrectly, 'Kingston'. 20. Cumpston, p. 83; Charles H. Barnard, Marooned, being a Narrative of the Sufferings and Adventures of Captain Charles H Barnard, ed. by B. S. Dodge (Middletown, Conn., 1979), pp. 5560. 21. See Morton. 22. Johnson, pers. comm. 23. Jones, pp. 89 and 98. 24. Jones, pp. 100 and 114.