Arthur Wakefield
Encyclopedia
Captain Arthur Wakefield (19 November 1799 – 17 June 1843) served with the Royal Navy, before joining his brother, Edward Gibbon Wakefield
, in founding the new settlement at Nelson, New Zealand
.
.
He joined the Royal Navy
at age eleven. He saw action in the Dutch East Indies
, and was part of the force that captured and burnt Washington, D.C.
during the War of 1812. He took part in the bombardment of Algiers. In the post-Napoleonic period he was stationed off South America
, involved in diplomatic duties during the various wars of independence. He then spent several years off the coast of West Africa as part of the flotilla engaged in the suppression of the slave trade. He also saw duty in the North Atlantic, the West Indies and the Mediterranean. He was eventually given command of his own ship, the steam frigate Rhadamanthus. However, in 1837 he was passed over for promotion, so, recognizing that his career was going nowhere, he resigned from the Navy in 1841.
and to lead the new settlement at Nelson
. His task was to select a party of settlers, escort them to New Zealand
and to supervise the growth of the new town. They sailed on the Whitby and arrived in Nelson in February, 1842.
The settlement of Nelson got off to a good start with Captain Wakefield doing everything he could to promote the orderly development of the colony. Although he seems to have been rather paternal in his attitude to the settlers, he also seems to have been respected and admired.
However the new colony was soon in serious difficulties. The New Zealand Company and particularly his brother, Edward Gibbon, had made extravagant promises to the settlers about the availability of land, offering one acre (4,000 m²) of urban land, fifty acres (200,000 m²), of suburban land and 150 acres (600,000 m²) of rural land to each settler family. They had nothing like that amount of land available and the existing owners, the Māori, the native people of the country, were very reluctant to sell their land and not inclined to trust the New Zealand Company promises.
In 1839, a whaling
ship, the Caroline under Capt John Blenkinsop, had visited Wairau
and taken on board water and wood. He then sailed to Kapiti Island
seeking out the chief, Te Rauparaha
in order to pay for the wood. He got Te Rauparaha to sign a receipt for the sale and then left, hurriedly. Te Rauparaha showed the receipt to another trader who told him he had been defrauded, that the receipt was in fact a bill of sale
for the whole of the Wairau Plain.
At the time this was a fairly pointless crime because Te Rauparaha was the law in the area, the only law that existed. Not even the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi
a year later changed this situation. Blenklinsop was drowned at sea and his widow sold the Bill of Sale to Edward Wakefield who used it to claim that the New Zealand Company owned most of the bottom of the North Island and the top of the South Island. When they eventually arrived in New Zealand they soon discovered that their survival was dependent on the goodwill of the Māori who held all the power. Furthermore the new government of William Hobson
in Auckland
was not at all sympathetic to their problems.
One of the basic tenets of the Treaty was the understanding that the Crown would protect the Māori from attempts to defraud them of their land. Some of the New Zealand Company and many of the settlers on the other hand saw the Māori as ignorant savages who had no right to stand in the way of honest British colonists. This was a period when the growing British Empire was very aware of what it saw as its manifest destiny, to rule the native peoples of the world.
In the meantime, Arthur Wakefield found he had far more settlers than he had land for and they were not happy. They believed they were owed the land and the Māori occupants had no right to stand in their way. For once, Edward Gibbon Wakefield urged caution, but he was in Wellington and his brother Arthur was the man on the spot.
in Nelson, Henry Thompson, was a very hot-tempered, arrogant man who was not prepared to accept that the Nelson settlement did not own and control the Wairau Plains. Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata
visited Nelson and made it very clear that they would not allow the settlers to occupy the Wairau Plain. Despite that, Wakefield and Thompson sent out surveyors. The Māori very firmly, but without violence, escorted them off their land and burnt down their hut.
Thompson immediately issued a warrant for the arrest of the two chiefs on a charge of arson. He and Wakefield then recruited a group of special constables and led them off to carry out the arrest. The result was the Wairau Massacre, in which Arthur Wakefield and 21 other of the party were killed by the Māori.
It is difficult to apportion the blame for this disaster. Henry Thompson appears to have been the driving force behind the attempt to arrest Te Rauparaha and he already had a reputation for headstrong, irrational impulses. But Wakefield was supposed to be in command of the settlement. His brother had told him that the claim to land was invalid. It seems that he yielded to the pressures and expectations of the people around him and particularly to Thompson. If he had been a stronger man, if he had listened to his conscience rather than expediency, he would not have died at Wairau. And yet he could hardly have been a weak man, having been an officer in the British Navy for many years and had risen to command his own ship with apparent success. He had seen a great deal of active service and he should have recognized the folly of accosting Te Rauparaha and his warriors at Wairau.
The subsequent government inquiry found the whole expedition had been illegal and exonerated the Māori. This did not sit well with the colonists, who immediately began a political campaign against the Governor, Robert FitzRoy
that contributed to his early dismissal.
The new settlement is now a thriving city, while a few kilometres away is the community of Wakefield
.
Edward Gibbon Wakefield
Edward Gibbon Wakefield was a British politician, the driving force behind much of the early colonisation of South Australia, and later New Zealand....
, in founding the new settlement at Nelson, New Zealand
Nelson, New Zealand
Nelson is a city on the eastern shores of Tasman Bay, and is the economic and cultural centre of the Nelson-Tasman region. Established in 1841, it is the second oldest settled city in New Zealand and the oldest in the South Island....
.
Royal Navy
Arthur Wakefield was born in Essex near London, a son of Edward Wakefield (1774-1854) and Susanna Crash (1767–1816); his other brothers were William Hayward Wakefield and Felix WakefieldFelix Wakefield
Felix Wakefield, , was the seventh child of Edward Wakefield and Susanna Crash of Felstead, he was the brother of Arthur and Edward Gibbon Wakefield. In 1831 he married Marie Bailley, by whom he had nine children.When he left school Felix began working with his father and training as a surveyor...
.
He joined the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
at age eleven. He saw action in the Dutch East Indies
Dutch East Indies
The Dutch East Indies was a Dutch colony that became modern Indonesia following World War II. It was formed from the nationalised colonies of the Dutch East India Company, which came under the administration of the Netherlands government in 1800....
, and was part of the force that captured and burnt Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
during the War of 1812. He took part in the bombardment of Algiers. In the post-Napoleonic period he was stationed off South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
, involved in diplomatic duties during the various wars of independence. He then spent several years off the coast of West Africa as part of the flotilla engaged in the suppression of the slave trade. He also saw duty in the North Atlantic, the West Indies and the Mediterranean. He was eventually given command of his own ship, the steam frigate Rhadamanthus. However, in 1837 he was passed over for promotion, so, recognizing that his career was going nowhere, he resigned from the Navy in 1841.
New Zealand Company
He was immediately recruited by his brother to join the New Zealand CompanyNew Zealand Company
The New Zealand Company originated in London in 1837 as the New Zealand Association with the aim of promoting the "systematic" colonisation of New Zealand. The association, and later the company, intended to follow the colonising principles of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the creation of...
and to lead the new settlement at Nelson
Nelson, New Zealand
Nelson is a city on the eastern shores of Tasman Bay, and is the economic and cultural centre of the Nelson-Tasman region. Established in 1841, it is the second oldest settled city in New Zealand and the oldest in the South Island....
. His task was to select a party of settlers, escort them to New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
and to supervise the growth of the new town. They sailed on the Whitby and arrived in Nelson in February, 1842.
The settlement of Nelson got off to a good start with Captain Wakefield doing everything he could to promote the orderly development of the colony. Although he seems to have been rather paternal in his attitude to the settlers, he also seems to have been respected and admired.
However the new colony was soon in serious difficulties. The New Zealand Company and particularly his brother, Edward Gibbon, had made extravagant promises to the settlers about the availability of land, offering one acre (4,000 m²) of urban land, fifty acres (200,000 m²), of suburban land and 150 acres (600,000 m²) of rural land to each settler family. They had nothing like that amount of land available and the existing owners, the Māori, the native people of the country, were very reluctant to sell their land and not inclined to trust the New Zealand Company promises.
In 1839, a whaling
Whaling
Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...
ship, the Caroline under Capt John Blenkinsop, had visited Wairau
Wairau
Wairau may refer to:*Wairau River, a river in the Marlborough Region of New Zealand's South Island*Wairau Valley, a valley of the Wairau River in the Marlborough Region*Wairau Valley, Auckland, a suburb of the North Shore...
and taken on board water and wood. He then sailed to Kapiti Island
Kapiti Island
-External links:* , Department of Conservation* * , Nature Coast Enterprise *...
seeking out the chief, Te Rauparaha
Te Rauparaha
Te Rauparaha was a Māori rangatira and war leader of the Ngāti Toa tribe who took a leading part in the Musket Wars. He was influential in the original sale of conquered Rangitane land to the New Zealand Company and was a participant in the Wairau Incident in Marlborough...
in order to pay for the wood. He got Te Rauparaha to sign a receipt for the sale and then left, hurriedly. Te Rauparaha showed the receipt to another trader who told him he had been defrauded, that the receipt was in fact a bill of sale
Bill of sale
A bill of sale is a legal document made by a 'seller' to a purchaser, reporting that on a specific date, at a specific locality, and for a particular sum of money or other "value received", the seller sold to the purchaser a specific item of personal, or parcel of real, property of which he had...
for the whole of the Wairau Plain.
At the time this was a fairly pointless crime because Te Rauparaha was the law in the area, the only law that existed. Not even the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi
Treaty of Waitangi
The Treaty of Waitangi is a treaty first signed on 6 February 1840 by representatives of the British Crown and various Māori chiefs from the North Island of New Zealand....
a year later changed this situation. Blenklinsop was drowned at sea and his widow sold the Bill of Sale to Edward Wakefield who used it to claim that the New Zealand Company owned most of the bottom of the North Island and the top of the South Island. When they eventually arrived in New Zealand they soon discovered that their survival was dependent on the goodwill of the Māori who held all the power. Furthermore the new government of William Hobson
William Hobson
Captain William Hobson RN was the first Governor of New Zealand and co-author of the Treaty of Waitangi.-Early life:...
in Auckland
Auckland
The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...
was not at all sympathetic to their problems.
One of the basic tenets of the Treaty was the understanding that the Crown would protect the Māori from attempts to defraud them of their land. Some of the New Zealand Company and many of the settlers on the other hand saw the Māori as ignorant savages who had no right to stand in the way of honest British colonists. This was a period when the growing British Empire was very aware of what it saw as its manifest destiny, to rule the native peoples of the world.
In the meantime, Arthur Wakefield found he had far more settlers than he had land for and they were not happy. They believed they were owed the land and the Māori occupants had no right to stand in their way. For once, Edward Gibbon Wakefield urged caution, but he was in Wellington and his brother Arthur was the man on the spot.
Death
The Chief MagistrateMagistrate
A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...
in Nelson, Henry Thompson, was a very hot-tempered, arrogant man who was not prepared to accept that the Nelson settlement did not own and control the Wairau Plains. Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata
Te Rangihaeata
Te Rangihaeata , was a Ngāti Toa chief, nephew of Te Rauparaha. He had a leading part in the Wairau Affray and the Hutt Valley Campaign.-Early life:...
visited Nelson and made it very clear that they would not allow the settlers to occupy the Wairau Plain. Despite that, Wakefield and Thompson sent out surveyors. The Māori very firmly, but without violence, escorted them off their land and burnt down their hut.
Thompson immediately issued a warrant for the arrest of the two chiefs on a charge of arson. He and Wakefield then recruited a group of special constables and led them off to carry out the arrest. The result was the Wairau Massacre, in which Arthur Wakefield and 21 other of the party were killed by the Māori.
It is difficult to apportion the blame for this disaster. Henry Thompson appears to have been the driving force behind the attempt to arrest Te Rauparaha and he already had a reputation for headstrong, irrational impulses. But Wakefield was supposed to be in command of the settlement. His brother had told him that the claim to land was invalid. It seems that he yielded to the pressures and expectations of the people around him and particularly to Thompson. If he had been a stronger man, if he had listened to his conscience rather than expediency, he would not have died at Wairau. And yet he could hardly have been a weak man, having been an officer in the British Navy for many years and had risen to command his own ship with apparent success. He had seen a great deal of active service and he should have recognized the folly of accosting Te Rauparaha and his warriors at Wairau.
The subsequent government inquiry found the whole expedition had been illegal and exonerated the Māori. This did not sit well with the colonists, who immediately began a political campaign against the Governor, Robert FitzRoy
Robert FitzRoy
Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy RN achieved lasting fame as the captain of HMS Beagle during Charles Darwin's famous voyage, and as a pioneering meteorologist who made accurate weather forecasting a reality...
that contributed to his early dismissal.
The new settlement is now a thriving city, while a few kilometres away is the community of Wakefield
Wakefield, New Zealand
The small New Zealand community of Wakefield is situated some 25 km south west of Nelson at the top of the South Island.First settled in about 1843, it was originally called Pitfure. However the name was soon changed to Wakefield...
.