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A Tale of Money from the High Seas
 | By Kerry Rodgers, Bank Note Reporter
December 17, 2008 |
Among the rarities that sold in Nobles' multi-million dollar Melbourne auction in July of last year was a uniface proof of a 19th century four-shilling note drawn on the London office of the Southern Whale Fishery Co. but for issue in the Auckland Islands. On auction day it fetched just more than $8,700.
In a previous incarnation as a research scientist I had learned something of the lands of the Great Southern Ocean. I was aware that the Auckland Islands were one of the least desirable pieces of real estate on the planet. I knew a little of British attempts to found a colony there. However, the proof offered by Nobles was new to me. Its sale stirred me into finding some of the history behind it.
Oil for an Empire's Lamps
In the late 1830s and 1840s the British had a problem. Through some studied carelessness on the part of the nation's politicians, the British whaling industry found itself in serious decline. It had lost its safe haven of Boston with the Americans enjoying an increasing monopoly of the whale market. Britain was quite unable to supply sufficient oil to light the lamps of its empire. It was having to buy increasing quantities of oil from those Damn Yankees.
In 1846 a consortium of British businessmen approached Charles Enderby to enquire how the nation's moribund whale industry might be revived. The firm of Samuel Enderby & Sons had long been prominent in whaling and general shipping. By happy coincidence it was their tea cargoes that had gotten dumped in Boston Harbor on Dec. 6, 1773. Charles had inherited the firm in 1829 and had managed the previously highly successful business into a series of financial disasters. By 1846 the firm was in urgent need of a serious cash injection, making those whaling overtures most timely.
Charles promptly proposed reviving the British Whale Fishery in the Great Southern Ocean. He recommended that a permanent whaling base be established in the shape of a fully fledged British colony on the Auckland Islands, complete with families and all facilities. To this end he sought and received government backing. He was given a Crown grant to use the islands, in recognition of their discovery by one of his father's captains. The British Government even anointed him lieutenant governor.
For Charles the Auckland Islands appeared to hold many advantages, not the least that they were already in regular use by whaling vessels as a temporary safe haven. To the prospective investors Charles painted a picture of numerous small craft going forth, catching whales, and bringing their oil and whalebone back to be stockpiled on the islands. Of course, he conveniently failed to mention that the remoteness of the Auckland Islands made them in effect a prison. No dissatisfied worker would ever be able to up sticks and desert.
Charles' master plan was backed by Sir James Clark Ross, of Ross Sea fame, who declared, "In the whole range of the vast Southern Ocean, no spot could be found combining so completely the essential requirements of a whaling station." But the plan also had its detractors. A letter in the Times of November 1848 dismissed Charles as "Lord of the Auckland Isles" and argued that New Zealand or Tasmania would provide a far better whaling base.
In mid-1849 the great enterprise was launched and Charles, with his party of settlers, arrived at Port Ross aboard the Samuel Enderby, Brisk and Fancy at the height of the southern summer.
Bankrupt Below the Roaring Forties
The Auckland Islands are situated in the Furious Fifties, 290 miles south of the southern tip of New Zealand's South Island at 50°42 S, 166°5 E. They are the largest of the sub-antarctic islands. They possess two major sheltered harbors.
Enderby's colonists included a medico, clerks, a surveyor, a storekeeper, bricklayers, masons, agriculturalists and laborers - plus 16 women and 14 children. They immediately set to establishing their new settlement of Hardwicke. It was New Year's Day 1850. A large house was provided for Charles and doubled as the company office. Twenty-five smaller houses and a store were occupied by the remainder of the party.
Ten months later Charles wrote to Earl Grey stating that all 72 on the island were well and the winter had not been as harsh as expected. By June 1851 the tally on the islands were 95 and Charles placed an order for 12 sheep to be provided weekly to feed these folk, quite a generous amount.
However, Charles was gilding what was rapidly becoming a fading lily. He had over-hyped and over-primed the entire venture from the beginning. The Auckland Islands had failed to live up to the hard sell of Sir James Ross. They had been found wet, windy and general inhospitable, with very poor soils.
More importantly, the assistant managers at Port Ross, William Mackworth and William Munce, quickly found their boss to be utterly incompetent. Organizational chaos and mismanagement became the order of the day. Whalers could not get to the killing fields and hence there was no income. Drunkenness was widespread and the social fabric of the community had broken down. It was clear the company was facing ruin.
When no return on their investment arrived in England, the shareholders dispatched two special commissioners to find out what exactly was going on. They found an overly ambitious, badly managed business that was far too costly to maintain. Some £30,000 had been spent on erecting infrastructure at Port Ross, yet a similar base station could have been established in Australia for not much over £2,000 - with far fewer staff.
In the two-and-half years the colony was in business, just 17 ocean voyages had been undertaken by the eight whaling ships. Although whales had proved numerous enough, when whalers did manage to put to sea, the weather had made it difficult to secure catches. Just 2,000 barrels of whale oil and 10 tons of whalebone had been landed.
The four-shilling promissory note provides a commentary on the excesses and unrealistic nature of Enderby's plans. A second note, an issued pound, is currently held by Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington. It was described in an article by Michael Fitzgerald, "A promissory note from the Auckland Islands," published in New Zealand Numismatic Journal vol. 17(3), pp. 97-99, 1988. It is printed on specially made Southern Whale Fishery watermarked paper.
Specially printed paper issues were a needless luxury. If Charles was holding sufficient hard cash to pay out on these notes at Port Ross he did not need them in the first place. Alternatively promissory or credit notes drawn on an Australian or New Zealand bank would have sufficed.
In the event, the special commissioners sacked Charles and wound up the company. They sold what they could and instituted court proceedings against the Enderby parent company in an attempt to recover some money. All buildings except one were disassembled and removed with even the bricks and iron work taken away as ballast.
The Auckland Islands' settlement was not only the most remote it was also the shortest-lived of all British colonies, lasting just two years eight months. Today the site has been reclaimed by regenerating scrub. Few artifacts remain, the four-shilling proof being one.
A Last Note
For Americans the Auckland Islands hold another claim to fame. In May 1866, The General Grant, a 1,005-ton three-masted bark named after Ulysses S. Grant, became lost in a fog off the islands. She was carrying 58 passengers and 25 crew bound from Melbourne and the nearby gold fields to London.
The ship hove-to and then drifted into a large cave on the main island's western shore. Trapped within the cave, the rising tide caused the main mast to collide with the roof driving it through the hull. Only 10 survivors were eventually rescued. And, as all inveterate treasure hunters know, the Grant's cargo included 2,576 ounces of gold. It has never been recovered and in all probability is now well scattered over the sea floor.
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