Perserverance
In 1810, Captain Frederick Hasselberg sailed into the uncharted waters of the Pacific Ocean’s south west in search of new sealing grounds. In doing so, he came upon two islands that had yet to be discovered by European sailors. The first he named Macquarie Island after the Governor of New South Wales and the second, Campbell Island, after the owner of his ship, Sydney merchant Robert Campbell. However the discovery of the remote islands was not the only major event the captain and his ship took part in that year.
In March, while Perseverance was at the Bay of Islands, the captain and his crew joined some 200 other crewmen made up from the whalers Speke, Atlanta, Inspector, Diana, and New Zealander as they launched a retaliatory attack on Te Pahi’s pa on an island inside the Bay, in response to the burning of the Boyd at the end of the previous year in Whangaroa.
Armed with muskets and ship’s guns, the inhabitants of the pa could offer no defense against the sailors, and the village was destroyed with about sixty people killed in the violent and unwarranted assault. Not even the proclamations of Te Pahi’s innocence by the actual perpetrators of the Boyd’s demise could stop the whalers who were intent on making an example of him.
The ramifications of the mistaken attack lasted long after the guns stopped firing and the last victim had fallen. Samuel Marsden’s plans for a christian mission station in New Zealand were put on indefinite hold, European contact and trade ground to a halt as captains and crew feared going anywhere near the dreaded and now infamous ‘Cannibal Isles,’ and tragically, chief Te Pahi died as a result of wounds he sustained in a tribal war that had started over the Boyd massacre and European sailors’ revenge.
Other instances of ships called Perseverance in New Zealand waters include; 1813 when Robert Williams sailed into Port McQuarrie in search of flax, and 1829, when Billy Worth arrived in Sydney on Elizabeth and Mary with ship wrecked passengers from the ship Perseverance which had founded in October 1828.
In March, while Perseverance was at the Bay of Islands, the captain and his crew joined some 200 other crewmen made up from the whalers Speke, Atlanta, Inspector, Diana, and New Zealander as they launched a retaliatory attack on Te Pahi’s pa on an island inside the Bay, in response to the burning of the Boyd at the end of the previous year in Whangaroa.
Armed with muskets and ship’s guns, the inhabitants of the pa could offer no defense against the sailors, and the village was destroyed with about sixty people killed in the violent and unwarranted assault. Not even the proclamations of Te Pahi’s innocence by the actual perpetrators of the Boyd’s demise could stop the whalers who were intent on making an example of him.
The ramifications of the mistaken attack lasted long after the guns stopped firing and the last victim had fallen. Samuel Marsden’s plans for a christian mission station in New Zealand were put on indefinite hold, European contact and trade ground to a halt as captains and crew feared going anywhere near the dreaded and now infamous ‘Cannibal Isles,’ and tragically, chief Te Pahi died as a result of wounds he sustained in a tribal war that had started over the Boyd massacre and European sailors’ revenge.
Other instances of ships called Perseverance in New Zealand waters include; 1813 when Robert Williams sailed into Port McQuarrie in search of flax, and 1829, when Billy Worth arrived in Sydney on Elizabeth and Mary with ship wrecked passengers from the ship Perseverance which had founded in October 1828.