Having a whale of a time at the point
Bluff pioneer William Stirling was buried on Tiwai Point around 1851. Stirling – probably pronounced ‘‘Starling’’ – built and managed the first of the Bluff whaling stations for John Jones in 1836.
The first site was on the original shoreline near the present wharf but it was too sandy and the station was rebuilt at Stirling Point, just in from the old signal station.
He managed the whaling station until 1844 and was then the owner for the last couple of years of its operation by which time the supply of right whales might have dwindled to one per year.
With 18 men to employ, Stirling would have turned his hand to other things including cattle raising on the substantial property he owned at that time.
The 1912 Southland Times Jubilee Supplement says, ‘‘It is said that his real name was William Pankhurst or Pankhirst, but Captain Peter Williams christened him Stirling when he took him on to the Preservation Inlet fishery.’’
The story runs that Williams was writing down the names of the men, and when he came to Pankhirst he said, ‘‘Oh, that’s too hard to spell. I’ll stick it down as Stirling.’’
Stirling was born at Broadstairs in England in 1812 and ran away to sea at age 14.
‘‘His mother arrived at the dock just too late to stop the ship and recover her young hopeful,’’ and by age 18 he was whaling on the New Zealand coast.
Stirling was married twice, to Iwikau and Mary Parker and he died aged only about 39. As an aside, one of Stirling’s whalers was John Clunies-Ross, a Scottish sailor who settled on the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean. Queen Victoria granted the islands to his family which owned the group until 1978.
Oh Betsy!
One of the more unfortunate vessels with a Southland connection was the Betsy.
In 1815 she landed 13 men to kill Elephant seals on Macquarie Island. Returning some months later she spent three weeks trying to make landfall but running short of supplies, she abandoned the effort and headed for Sydney.
Her rudder was lost and sails blown away and the starving crew was unable to control the vessel as she drifted up the west coast.
Off the Northland coast, with no food or water, the remaining ablebodied men launched a whaleboat and rowed ashore, towing a second boat with their dying companions.
Unable to make headway they cut the second boat adrift and eventually reached the shore.
The six survivors were rescued 20 months after landing, having been Maori captives for that time.
The sealing gang left on Macquarie fared better.
Where is the middle?
The remotest spot in Southland from our borders – Otago and the briny sea – seems to be Family Peaks in the Takitimu Range which is 57 kilometres from the Otago boundary as it passes through the Eyre Mountains, and the same distance from the sea at Te Waewae Bay and Deep Cove. The equivalent for Otago is Tarras which is about 64km from its borders with Southland, Westland and Canterbury.
Mass wedding
Southland’s largest mass wedding was possibly in 1844 when 15 couples were married successively by Bishop Selwyn on Stewart Island.
There was only one wedding ring and that was used by all the couples.
The incident is mentioned in the account of life in the south in the 1830s and 1840s by William Thomas who was one of those married.
Another to be married that day was Captain Anglem.
Thomas says, ‘‘Well, we had a service – not that that was altogether unusual, for Captain Anglem read prayers sometimes – and then the Bishop asked if any of us wanted to be married. Captain Anglem was wild.
‘I am married,’ he said, ‘by all the law of this country, and that’s as binding in the sight of God as all the parsons in the world could make it.’ ‘I quite agree with you,’ said the Bishop, ‘but now you have a chance of marrying according to the customs of your own country, are you willing to avail yourself of it?’ ‘O certainly,’ said Captain Anglem. So we were all married. I went first because the ring belonged to me.’’