HISTORY - WHALING PRE-TREATY
"A noble anchorage" was James Cook's description of Kororareka. Tucked behind sheltering headlands and with good, deep water off shore it was ideal for visiting shipping. Pacific whalers needing a base to pick up supplies, to get repairs done, and to give their men time ashore started visiting from the early 1800s and kept visiting for nearly a hundred years. At first it was English vessels which came; often convict carriers ex-Australia which now empty and needing a return cargo went whaling. American vessels quickly followed in such numbers that an American consul was appointed for a time to offer assistance to whalers if needed.
Around the town, there are a number of artefacts dating from the town's whaling history.
Whangamumu Harbour provides evidence of the area's earlier whaling history with the remains of an old whaling station. It is accessible by a Department of Conservation track. Whaling continued until the 1950s but is now outlawed.
Whalers were not the only Europeans. A visiting English artist Augustus Earle recorded seeing a group of tradesmen, "a respectable body of Scotch mechanics…here is heard daily the sound of the sawpit, while piles of neat white planks appear arranged on the beach".
Other visitors were more transient: escaped convicts from Australia or deserting sailors (a whaling ship was not the most pleasant work place) helped Kororareka develop a nickname Hellhole of the Pacific. When the whaling ships were in port and crews loose on shore leave grogshops and brothels did a roaring trade and life on the waterfront was rough, rowdy and sometimes violent.
The importance to Maori of trade with visiting shipping is illustrated by the Girls War of 1830 in which two favourites of a whaling captain from different tribal groups got into an argument. The conflict spread and Kororareka beachfront soon erupted into a battle between two large groups. At the heart of the conflict was not any slight to the girls but the wish for one group to dominate the trade with visiting shipping. The missionaries who came over from Paihia were powerless to avert hostilities.
Law and order in the settlement was largely non-existent despite a local vigilante group and the appointment of a British resident at Waitangi so responsible settlers at Kororareka decided to sign a petition to the British king William IV asking for the benefit of British government.
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