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The Rosanna Settlers, by Hilda McDonnell

Captain Herd of the Providence
Chapter 2

Contents: introduction | chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Journal | Sources

In June 1821 the ship Providence, with Captain Herd as master, left London with 103 female prisoners bound for New South Wales. The colony at that time included Van Diemen’s Land. All had been convicted in English or Scottish courts. Also on board were 17 groups of women and children brought out at government expense to join convicted men already in the colony. The Providence carried a few cabin passengers as well, whose names were listed in the Hobart Town Gazette in late December 1821 when the Providence reached Hobart Town. They were: Mrs Halloran, Miss Laura Halloran, the Misses Anna Mary, Margaret and Eliza Magill, Mr and Mrs Platt and family and Mr and Mrs Robertson and family. Among the female convicts transported by Captain Herd were:

Providence

NamesWhere convictedWhenTerm

Rebecca Stretch
Esther Crew alias Jones
Mary Gray
Mary Connor
Ann the wife of Joseph Lloyd
Mary Neville
Bridget L'Estrange
Mary Mort
Mary Taylor
Mary Hill
Mary Clarke
Jane Jones alias Linback
Elizabeth Gould
Mary Hughes
Ann Prince

Chester (city)
ditto (city)
ditto (city)
Devon
Gloucester
Lancaster
ditto
ditto
ditto
ditto
ditto
ditto
London
ditto
ditto

Pleas of Crownmote
Session of Pleas
Pleas of Crownmote
Assizes
Quarter session
ditto
Assizes
Quarter session
ditto
Assizes
Quarter session
ditto
Gaol delivery
ditto
ditto

22 Aug 1820
23 Aug 1820
26 Oct 1820?
31 July 1820
17 Oct 1820
31 Jan 1820
20 Mar 1820
17 Apr 1820
17 Jul 1820
23 Aug 1820
3 Oct 1820
6 Nov 1820
13 Sep 1820
13 Sep 1820
25 Oct 1820

7 years
7 years
7 years
7 years
7 years
Life
Life
7 years
7 years
Life
7 years
7 years
14 years
7 years
14 years

En route to New South Wales the Providence called at Praia in the Cape Verde Islands and at Rio de Janeiro. Then sailing in an easterly direction along the Great Circle route the Providence touched at Tristan da Cunha and St Paul’s Island in the Indian Ocean. At last, on 17 December 1821 the Providence finally reached Hobart Town and half the female convicts were landed.

In 1822, like other missionaries bound for New Zealand, Henry Williams and his wife Marianne travelled by convict transport. They sailed along the same route to New South Wales as Captain Herd. Coming out on the Lord Sidmouth both missionaries kept a journal of events. Like Captain Herd they passed the barren Cape Verde Islands. At Rio they noticed saints enclosed in glass cases on street corners, saw the local slave market and the slave trading ships in Rio harbour belonging to the English merchants. On 21 November 1822 four slave vessels were noted close to them in the harbour, laden with children. Marianne’s little son became a pet with the first mate, the surgeon, the captain’s steward and the mate. Two convict girls attended her children during the day but were locked in the prison at night.

Once when another ship passed the captains talked to each other through the speaking trumpet. Of a Sunday the “most respectable” of the free women appeared on deck, walking about with gloves on. There were separate quarters for men and women. Every part of the ship below was offensive. They had milk from one of the goats on board and an ample supply of linen. They were more than a fortnight becalmed near Brazil in a hot and trying climate. The thermometer showed 84 degrees and 90 degrees (fahrenheit) in the night. During the rough weather all the women and children were sick and Marianne, when not too weak for writing, attempted a little stitching and reading of the psalms and wrote letters.
Marianne Williams reported that the surgeon was good to the prisoners and tolerated the “obscene singing of the convict women,” attended the sick and “prevented the women having contact with the sailors.” The cockroaches got into the bread, cheeses, hams, potatoes and also into books, boots, shoes, paper-parcels and musket-stocks. The master of the ship, “advanced in years and of a nervous disposition,” had his own way in everything. He occasionally suffered from gout.

Off St Paul’s Island a party consisting of the captain, the surgeon and Henry Williams together with the boat crew were away more than two hours. They took with them guns, pistols and fishing tackle, expecting to bring back wild pigs and fish. They stood off and on, continually putting the ship about in waiting. When they landed at St Paul’s they were able to boil the fish on the hook in the hot spring. They proceeded to the fishing ground just over the bar and caught quite a few fish but as it came on squally, they returned on board.

By the time they got near Hobart Town there was very little milk and no potatoes on board. They proceeded along the high rocky shore south of Van Diemen’s Land. The captain, Henry Williams and the surgeon examined the shore with the glasses and chart. Marianne Williams recorded her impressions of Hobart Town:

The pilot came on board immediately after breakfast. The rain prevented my watching the shores of the Derwent until we were off Hobart Town when it cleared up, and gave us a view of this young capital which after leaving Rio appeared diminutive…I was much interested in the situation of the free women. No boat was allowed to come on board but that of the water-bailiff, a convict, and round him they all flocked, to obtain news of their husbands. Several of them from time to time were fetched away by this person; and their husbands, convicts, waited for them, on the jetta. Our convicts were all gazing over the ship’s side, and many persons were on the beach. The first woman for whom a note was sent was a young, pretty looking and well-behaved woman with three children, dressed so sprucely I could not recognise my old bare-footed acquaintances.
A little boy about three years old was first handed down; and the father immediately jumped off the landing place to some stones beneath. Some of the poor women could gain no tidings of their husbands and were in great anxiety and distress.
When Captain Herd arrived at Hobart Town on the Providence in 1821 the harbourmaster was James Kelly, who was master of the Sophia during the infamous 1817 incident in Otago harbour. The Providence left Hobart Town on 31 December 1821 and arrived at Sydney with 51 female prisoners, 19 children and “free” passengers. There were no adverse reports relating to the voyage of the Providence and it was apparently a well-conducted voyage. The surgeon, Dr Reid, left the ship at Sydney. Herd spent some two and a half months in Port Jackson where he would have obtained what information he could about New Zealand, his next intended destination. Captain Herd then readied himself to sail:

Muster Roll of the Providence, departing Sydney 26 March 1822
[AO NSW Ref: 4/4773, Reel 561]:

Muster roll of the ship Providence of London Mr. James Herd, Master, Burthen, per Register, 300 tons, arrived in Sydney Cove [Jan ] 182[2], sailed [March] 182[2]. bound to the West Coast of America.

Jas Herd Master
Wm Greer 1st mate
Henry Best 2d ditto
Geo Bartlett Boatsn
Davd Flemming Carpenter
Wm Falmswth Sailmaker (Came in the Vessel)
Jn Martin Cook
Jn Rae Steward
Jas Ellis Seaman
Danl Lost ditto
Jas Chambers ditto
Robt Walton ditto
Thos Reynolds ditto
Davd Daley ditto
Thos Mannings Able Boy

Saml Robart Seaman discharged from Midas
Jn Hutton ditto cleared fr Active, pd 3/6
Henry Bartley ditto discharged from Elizth Henrietta 24 Dec 1821
Jn Goff Boy Run from Hindostan
Even Dowell Seaman discharged from Midas, 16 Feb 1822
Chas. Smith Boy run from Ld. Eldon 1818, lived since with George Murphy, waterman
David Ross Seaman embarked from Jail

Mustered 22 Mar “22.
On board: 21

300 tons… ₤ 9.10
21persons ₤ 2.12.6
₤12.02.6

Due to stress of weather and contrary winds, on 9 April 1822 the Providence again put in to Hobart Town where Reid, the ex-surgeon of the Providence, already was. He was returning to England. Then on 22 April, with “full crew and passengers” according to a Port Certificate book, the Providence again left Hobart Town. The vessel reached the Bay of Islands on 8 May. To get there Captain Herd may possibly have sailed to the east of New Zealand.

The Providence remained two days in the Bay of Islands, taking on board the missionary Thomas Kendall as interpreter. Kendall had first come across to New Zealand in 1814 with Captain Dillon in the Active and in Sydney had published a little grammar of the New Zealand language. He had only recently returned from a visit to England with two chiefs, Hongi and the young Waikato. His wife and family had remained in New Zealand, including his oldest son Thomas Surfleet Kendall.

By 19 May the Providence was anchored in the Hokianga river. Captain Herd was to remain there four months, trading with the local people and obtaining a return cargo of kauri spars. He had experience of the northern spar trade. On 28 June Captain Herd wrote to John Cowell, a rope maker and lay missionary in the Bay of Islands, asking him to join them. Cowell then went tothe Hokianga for a month. Cowell had come over from Sydney on the Westmoreland on 13 February and had been staying with the Kendalls. On 28 June Captain Herd wrote:

We have taken on board a quantity of fine spars, but the natives cut the larger ones too short, for instance, spars of thirty to twenty inches are not longer than sixty-four or sixty-eight foot, while they should have been eighty foot, and this renders them not of one half the value they would have been in England; so that I am thinking could we sell these in Port Jackson at such a price as would save the ship’s expenses, I would return here and procure a cargo of select spars that would pay the ship well to carry home. We have obtained five to six hundred loads of timber, the greater part excellent spars for general purposes, and a great many masts for vessels of four hundred tons burthen.

Herd and Kendall quarrelled but Captain Herd later said of Kendall that he could not have obtained his cargo of kauri spars without him. Kendall was paid ₤150. Herd made a survey of the Hokianga river and the bar at the heads and a copy of this chart was left with Kendall.

On board the Providence in the Hokianga river on 7 August 1822 James Herd, master of the Providence, Thomas Kendall, missionary, and William Edward Greer, 1st officer of the providence, signed their names as witnesses to an:

Agreement between the Baron Charles Phillipe Hippolytus de Thierry of Somerset, England and Queen’s College, Cambridge and Mudi Wai [Muriwai], Patu One [Patuone] and Nene, (there present), native residents on the banks of the River Iokeanga [Hokianga] in the Islands of New Zealand, whereby the…aforementioned chiefs and natives of New Zealand sold forever all the said lands, woods and waters situated in the boundaries there designated, to the extent of 40,000 acres [Archives New Zealand OLC 1045

Patuone, Muriwai and Nene made their marks on the document. Payment was 36 axes. Patuone had met Samuel Marsden in 1819 at the chief’s home in New Zealand. During the summer of 1819/1820 Patuone had commanded 800 warriors in an expediton to the south. He had told Marsden in November 1820 that he had gone as far south as Cook Strait and had crossed to the South Island.

Patuone was to visit Sydney in 1826 and in 1827 Patuone and Nene went to the help of the Wesleyan mission then in danger at Whangaroa. Patuone later gave his protection to the New Zealand Company settlers in the Hokianga.

Based at Kerikeri was John Gare Butler, the senior Church Missionary Society missionary. He had returned to New Zealand from Sydney in February 1822 on the same ship as John Cowell. That year he made several notes in his diary about Captain Herd and the Providence:

Sunday 23 June [1822]: Wykaot [Waikato], the one of the natives that accompanied Mr Kendall to England, arrived at Kide Kide [Kerikeri] this morning from Shukihangah [Hokianga], bringing the news that the ship “Providence,” Capt Herd, is loading in that harbour with spars, and paying for them with muskets and powder. Rev. Mr Kendall is aboard to act as interpreter, and will remain until the ship is full!!

Late August: Mr Kendall is at Shukianga, as also is Mr Cowell. Tuesday and Wednesday: the ship Providence came intot he harbur on Friday, laden with spars from the River Shukeanga. Rev. Mr Kendall who acted as interpreter for her returned to Rangi Hoo [Rangihoua] on her. Capt Herd I understand, intends to dispose of the spars at Valparaiso, and reload for England from thence, if possible.

Monday 2 September: Thursday and Friday the ship Providence went out of the harbour Thurday Sept 4th, after having one of the boats broken by Wykato at Rangi Hoo.

Chapter 3.......

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