Articles in ‘History’

New Zealand has its noble history – the glossy version which is safe for our children to learn about in school, the version of peace, pasture and parchment. But then there’s the other history of New Zealand, a history in which men like Hongi Hika orchestrated endless warfare, drenching entire generations in blood, just to quell their appetite. Welcome to Part 1 of New Zealand’s…

On his return to England in July 1775, Cook accepted a position with the Royal Hospital at Greenwich, claiming his sailing days were over, probably to the relief of his wife. Before long, the lure of the ocean had Cook agreeing to lead a two-ship expedition to the North Pacific. He would again command Resolution, with the assistance of John Gore and William Bligh (of Bounty…

Still believing a Southern Continent existed, and keen to locate it, Joseph Banks pushed hard for a second Pacific voyage. To his disappointment, the Admiralty called on Cook to lead the expedition, with instructions to find a suitable ship. He found two: Resolution and Adventure, which were fitted out for the voyage. Some of the crew employed had sailed with Cook on the…

Most of our readers are too young to remember the great airships that sailed, ever so majestically, across the Atlantic between Europe and the Americas. Those fortunate enough to do so, remember them as a sight never to be forgotten. Probably the best remembered, not only for her tragic end at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937, but also for her size and grace, was the…

In May 1768, having secured a naval commission, forty-year old Lieutenant Cook was finally given the command of his own ship. Officially, Cook was sent to the South Pacific to observe the Transit of Venus. An accurate calculation of ‘the distance of the sun from the earth and Venus’, would allow scientists to determine ‘the size of the universe’. Secret orders instructed Cook to…

James Cook’s quest to ‘range’ further than any other man began incrementally. Having declined the offer by his employer, John Walker, to take command of one of his ships Cook volunteered for service with the British Royal Navy. Walker was unsurprised at Cook’s change in direction, observing that the twenty-seven year old ‘had always an ambition to go into the Navy’.[^2] Cook…

The history of gold stretches as far back as the beginning of civilization. Humans have long since realized the value of gold for both decoration and currency due to its rarity, lustre and ease of exchange, and while it remains a global business with no shortage of big and small scale mining operations and reality TV shows, especially in America. In New Zealand the discovering…

As a terrible storm raged over the North Island coast in December 1769 the ships of Captain Cook and the French explorer Jean-François-Marie de Surville unknowingly passed within a relatively short distance of each other. Both the British and the French governments on behalf of their respective monarchies were engaged in a progressive programme of expansion of their foreign…

This year, between October and December, a replica of the Endeavour will sail around New Zealand to commemorate a significant event in Aotearoa New Zealand’s history: Captain James Cook’s first visit to New Zealand. While not the first European to visit New Zealand shores, Cook was the first to explore and chart both north and south islands, compiling ‘the first cartographic map’…

In the early decades of the 18th century New Zealand was enjoying the profitable beginnings of international trade with its nearest neighbour, New South Wales. The establishment of a British penal colony in Sydney was Great Britain’s solution a group of inter-related problems. A rapidly increasing population, displaced by the social behemoth ‘Industrial Revolution’, the rise of…

Agathis australis, or Kauri in Maori is one of New Zealand’s oldest and mightiest coniferous trees that can grow upwards of fifty metres and can live around two thousand years. Found in the northern districts of New Zealand, the Kauri was once prolific covering 1.2 million hectares from the far North of Northland to Te Kauri near Kawhia, when the first people arrived in New…

In the Northern Hemisphere the traditional ‘May Day’ celebration is an ancient festival whose origins are shrouded in the mists of time. It is said that the earliest May Day observances began in pre-Christian times out of the Roman empire, a dedication to the Roman flower goddess Floralia, or Flora and a celebration of the advent of the arrival of Summer and blossoming flowers. Ho…

The white man who figuratively held the gun for a chief to pull the trigger thus igniting the worst holocaust New Zealand in New Zealand’s history. In 1799 a ‘new dissent’ had been afoot for some several decades, the intense and radical revivalist child of ‘The Great Awakening’ that had spread throughout Christendom like a plague during the 18th century. ‘The Great Awakening’…

The question hung in the air between us ‘So what drew you to the Chatham Islands in the first place? The two pairs of eyes looking back at me widened, the heads nodded together and two voices in unison replied ‘Fossilised sharks teeth’. Kiri jumped up from her chair and disappeared into the farm house returning minutes later with an oblong box. Plonking it down on the table she…

Part 2 in a 6 part series looking at the ‘scumbuggering’ that has happened through the years in New Zealand. The Georgian England of the 1800s was a savage regime still attempting to come to grips with the sweeping social changes that had arisen as a direct result of the industrial revolution of the 1700s. A massive exodus of country folk from off the land into the newly…

‘Once Were Whalers…’ is part 1 of a 6 part series looking at the ‘scumbuggery’ that has happened through the years in New Zealand. It was the era that has retrospectively been described as the Age of Discovery, a time when the commercial and imperial interests of Europe sought to expand their power through global exploratory expeditions. It was also a time when the foreign policy…

For thousands of years, history, genealogies, stories and mythology had to be memorised by rote and gruelling repetition, then handed down in perfect oral delivery to each ensuing generation. For this mammoth task, children exhibiting the brightest and best minds within a tribe were chosen and set aside to be the bearers of the knowledge. This oral transmission prevailed in many…

Situated on the picturesque Otago Peninsula perched atop a rising ridge stands the imposing and lasting monument to one man’s insistent desire to announce to the world that he had arrived, that he was someone and that he had ‘done good’. William Larnach had grown up on the rural estate of Rosemount, in the Patrick Plains of the Hunter Valley near Singleton in New South Wales,…

A few months ago elocal brought you the little-known story of Port Waikato's 1891 earthquake. Now a local woman has done a bit of moving and shaking of her own with her history of the sleepy seaside town. Actually it's the author herself, Glennis Paton, who's been shaken up the most. The success of her newly published book, The Way We Were - Port Waikato, has taken her completely…

New Zealand was first settled in the 13th century, by Maori, right? Think again. The first people living in New Zealand weren’t masons or horticulturalists, right? Think again. For every library, government department, trust and iwi that tells you their version of New Zealand history, there are just as many alternative historians asking challenging questions, not to mention…