Enderby Settlement Diaries

by William Augustus Mackworth & William John Munce (Diarists)

In 1849, the Enderby Settlement, so called after the visionary founder Charles Enderby, was luaded by British politicians and other dignistaries as a "well judged project". With Enderby appointed Lieutenant Governor, as the Crown's representative, and Chief Commissioner of the Southern Whale Fishery Company, the lessee of the Auckland Islands, the proposed colony carried the nation's hopes of reviving its global whaling industry. History records that the ill-fated settlement was to be dissolved within three years, without attaining its ambitious goals. Little was previously known of the eventful life for this isolated society in the mid-19th Century, glimpsed now through the diaries of two of the Company's senior officers, William Mackworth amd William Munce. The story revealed here is a testimony to the courage and endeavour of a small group of carefully selected men and women who embarked on a three-month ocean voyage to found a new community in a totally unfamiliar environment.
The Enderby colonists, and the Maori and Moriori 'New Zealanders' with whom they harmoniously shared their island home, were to be the first and last permanent settlers at the Auckland Islands.

266 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Neil Stanley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was published in 1999 in a numbered limited edition of 1000. I purchased a copy of this book over 20 years ago - number 425. The Enderby settlement on the Auckland Islands was Britain’s most remote & shortest-lived attempt at colonisation, in the early 1850s. The colony was an attempt by the Southern Whale Fisheries Co. with the initial support of the British Government & led by Charles Enderby, Scion of the prominent Enderby whaling family - see Enderby Island in northern Canada. It had been noted that the Auckland Islands were about the same latitude south of the equator than southern England was north, therefore it was assumed climate would be similar! The idea was to establish a base for the companies whaling fleet, to reprovision & store whale oil & also indulge in shore whaling. Weather conditions were against them from the start. Unlike southern England, the Auckland Islands, situated deep in the Southern Ocean in what is commonly now known as the Furious Fifties, were lashed by rain & gales over 300 days of the year, & it also coincided with a decline in the number of whales taken in the area. In fact the shore operation only took one whale during the time of settlement & that was shortly before the settlement was abandoned.

The Diaries, only discovered relatively recently, were kept by two officials - William Mackworth, the assistance commissioner, & William Munce, the accountant. Mackworth arrived at the Auckland Islands on 1 January 1850, on the 2nd of the three ships that sailed with settlements, & his diary covers the entire period of its existence of the colony until its abandonment in August 1852. Munce replaced the first accountant who had left through illness & didn’t arrive until August 1850. Although he stayed to the end - he also brought over his wife & kids - his diary stopped on 8 January 1852 - or perhaps later book was lost. From the diaries, it becomes immediately obvious that the colony was fraught with problems, mainly weather, with supplies, drunkenness & refusal to work from sailors who arrived on Company whaling ships - Munce was responsible for paying them. Mackworth’s entry for Sun 25 May 1851 says it all: “Incessant rain. Read Divine Service - I am in very low spirits, nothing to cheer or encourage one in this dismal banishment. My health has suffered much latterly from anxiety of mind and exposure to the weather.” Eventually special commissioners, sent out from London, removed Enderby & Mackworth became acting commissioner, adding to his worries.

While hard to get, this book would be of great interest to historians of British colonisation, as Mackworth’s diary is probably the only such document by a single individual the covers the entirety of a colony, from its inception to abandonment.