Dialogue: A hearty three cheers for Hobson's choice

By PROFESSOR RUSSELL STONE*

Auckland is 160 years old today. You didn't know? That's not surprising. Few Aucklanders would.

The anniversary day of most provinces in New Zealand and states in Australia commemorates the foundation of the settlement, or perhaps the arrival of their first shippers.

Auckland's anniversary day, January 29, celebrates the day in 1840 when the HMS Herald, bearing the colony's first governor, anchored in the Bay of Islands. Scarcely an event to arouse provincial pride.

Long ago Baccaria wrote, "Happy is the nation without a history." If that is true of cities as well, Auckland should have the happiest of citizens. Very little has been written about the city's earliest days.

Just ask the average Aucklander who founded the settlement. If you get any answer at all it is likely to be Sir John Logan Campbell. He's known as the Father of Auckland, isn't he?

But the founder was in fact Captain Hobson, the colony's first governor. Indeed some historians consider him more entitled than Campbell to be called the Father of Auckland. After all, in the teeth of the great opposition of the settlers at Port Nicholson, he chose Tamaki as the site of his capital. And he called the town Auckland in honour of his patron Lord Auckland.

What follows is the story of how Hobson's choice came to be made.

Shortly after the first signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, a mission of seven Orakei chiefs led by Te Reweti came to visit the governor at the Bay of Islands. On behalf of their paramount chief Te Kawau and his tribe Ngati Whatua o Tamaki, they invited Hobson to live on the Waitemata. Ngati Whatua were fully entitled to do this. According to Maori customary law they held the mana whenua over the greater part of the Tamaki isthmus.

But Te Kawau's branch of the Ngati Whatua iwi had become small in numbers. The tribe felt threatened by powerful neighbours, Nga Puhi to the north and Ngati Paoa to the south. It was Te Kawau's conviction that if Hobson could be persuaded to set up his government on the Waitemata, Ngati Whatua would have the most powerful European in the country as their Pakeha Maori. Then they would be secure at last.

Over the next five months Hobson and his officials made three careful inspections of the Waitemata harbour and its shoreline. By August he had decided to shift his government headquarters there from Russell. He gave his masters in London two main reasons for doing so. The enclosing Waitemata and Manukau harbours, he said, made Tamaki an ideal location for the water transport on which New Zealand, at that time, was so heavily reliant. And though Tamaki was largely deserted, it was the centre of a region of close settlement of the Maori people who, Hobson maintained, had a major claim upon his attention.

On September 13, 1840, Hobson despatched the barque Anna Watson from Russell for the Waitemata. This vessel carried, under the leadership of a Police Magistrate, Captain Symonds, an advance party made up of six officials and 32 mechanics, artisans and labourers most of whom had been recruited in Sydney with their families. When the Anna Watson dropped anchor in the Waitemata, she found awaiting her another barque, the Platina, reputed to be the first merchant vessel to berth in the Waitemata. It had brought from England a prefabricated governor's house and furniture. Over the next two days, the Surveyor-General selected the eastern side of the lower Queen St valley to be the heart of the new settlement. On September 18, all was ready for the formal ceremony of taking possession.

Just after midday, in beautiful weather, the officials and a handful of sailors from the Anna Watson came ashore on a tidal beach, now reclaimed land near the foot of modern Queen St. They climbed a promontory, soon to be named Point Britomart. The point no longer exists, but it would have been located somewhere near today's Emily St and Anzac Ave.

Before the ceremony began, Ngati Whatua chiefs, attended by almost 100 followers, signed after some last-minute hesitation a provisional deed of sale for the block of land that was to be Auckland. This block of 3000 acres could be likened in shape to a wedge of cake whose apex was Maungawhau (Mt Eden) and whose base was the irregular coastline between the bottom of Brighton Rd in the east, and Opou (Coxs Creek) in the west.

Once the deed was signed, the flag of St George was run up on a flagstaff, amid the cheers of bystanders. At the base of the pole the name Auckland was carved.

A royal salute of 21 guns from the Anna Watson followed; then a salute of 15 guns from the Platina. At that juncture, said a bystander, Her Majesty's health was most rapturously drunk by those at the foot of the flagstaff, the toast being acclaimed by three-times-three hearty cheers.

The crew aboard the Anna Watson responded by firing a salute of seven guns in honour of Hobson. This led in turn to three hearty cheers and one cheer more from those on shore.

These cheers, long and loud, repeated from the ships are said to have delighted the Maori on the point, who nevertheless, would probably have considered a haka more appropriate.

The afternoon's festivities took the form of a regatta; Auckland's first. Mrs Mathew, wife of the Surveyor-General, recorded in her journal that the gentlemen got up a race among themselves, another for the sailors, and a canoe race for the natives.

The Surveyor-General's five-oared gig raced against the six-oared captain's gig from the Anna Watson, both pulled in excellent style by amateurs, it was reported.

There was also a contest for a purse of £5 between the whaleboats of the Captain and the young harbour master, David Rough. Rough's team won.

There seems to have been no prize for the winner of the race between the two large canoes paddled by Maori. But each paddler was awarded a half-pound of tobacco, with which, it was said, he seemed much delighted.

In the evening, young Rough tried to keep things going by singing a few songs to the accompaniment of his guitar. But this was only a partial success. Mrs Mathew explained that he had shouted himself somewhat hoarse in honour of her Majesty in the morning.

The next eight months were hard, grinding work for those who had to prepare Auckland to be an effective Government settlement and not just a name on a surveyor's map.

The Maori contribution was enormous. At low cost they provided comfortable thatched huts for officials, Government mechanics and private settlers alike. They were provisioners of food: pork, potatoes, and a wide range of cheap vegetables. They supplied firewood and other scarce timber. They contributed their skills as stonemasons, woodworkers, gardeners and labourers.

The making of Auckland was a bi-cultural affair. It remains so today.

Hobson was derided until the day he died for making the shoreline of the Waitemata his capital.

Opponents called it a proclamation town, an artificial capital. But times have proved Hobson's choice to be a good one.

Auckland has grown lustily over its 160 years.

No longer the political capital of New Zealand, it has become the country's commercial capital. Lying as it does on the interface of national and world economies in a 24-hour trading world it is likely to remain so.

Perhaps Hobson was more farseeing than he was given credit for.

* Professor Russell Stone lectures in history at Auckland University.