Johnny Jones: A Colonial Saga

By Diana Harris

* Story of a prominent Otago pioneer brings early New Zealand vividly to life
* Authentic chronicle of how land and power passed from Maori hands to British
* Spans first half of the nineteenth century New Zealand history

Johnny Jones was born in the convict town of Sydney. Undeterred by this unpromising beginning, the good-looking lad with a will of iron sets out to make his fortune – and eventually finds it in New Zealand.

Along the way he is beset by shipwrecks, bankruptcy, personal tragedy and the occasional bout of fisticuffs. He makes friends with Tuhawaiki, the paramount chief of the South Island: and through him has the effrontery, along with well-known Australian lawyer William Charles Wentworth, to ‘buy’ the whole of the South Island at the time when Britain was planning to annex New Zealand.

This story spans the first half of the 19th century and brings early New Zealand vividly to life. It is not just a biography, but an authentic chronicle of how land and power passed from Maori hands to the British.

Its sold-out first edition was published in print by Reed Publishing. Due to continuing demand, it has been reissued as an ebook.

‘Well written, well researched and a darned good read’ – Rae McGregor, reviewed on ‘Nine to Noon’, Radio New Zealand.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diana Harris
• Release date: Feb 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9780473341404

Diana Harris

Diana Harris (née Harkness) was brought up in Christchurch and now lives in the countryside north of Auckland. She is devoted to writing about New Zealand – the past and the present – and what makes it special. She has had several books published, including two children’s stories (Guardian of the Bridge and Litterbugs) and a collection of interesting facts about New Zealand, in The Kiwi Fact Book. Some time ago she became fascinated by the story of Johnny Jones, her great-great-great grandfather, and has spent many years researching and writing this epic tale.

Book preview

Preamble

When I was a little girl at school we listened to recorded stories about well-known New Zealanders. One day I went home and told my mother that today we had heard about a horrible man called Johnny Jones. ‘That is your great-great-great grandfather,’ she replied, ‘and he wasn’t as bad as they say.’

In 1989, after reading my grandfather’s old books about Otago, I began my voyage of discovery, researching and writing Jones’ story. Along the way many people have helped me, and to them I say thank you.

I would particularly like to mention, on the Jones side, Bill Isaac, great-grandson of Johnny; Alfred Jones of Melbourne, Garth Cockerill and Pat White. John Jones of Otago, by Alfred Eccles and AH Reed, has been a rich source of information.

On the Orbell side, I owe a great debt to C. Holmes Miller’s Sturdy Sons, Macleod Orbell’s ‘Reminiscences’, Catherine (Kate) Orbell’s ‘Journal’ and Dr GB Orbell and Eric Orbell’s compilation of the Orbell family tree. Maxwell Miller of Melbourne, Patrick Miller, and David Allen in England have added to my knowledge of the Orbell family.

The research by Ian Church of Port Chalmers into the ships owned by Jones and his early life has been invaluable, and the Hocken Library and the Otago Settlers Museum have both been extremely helpful. I have also obtained information from the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, and the State Archives of New South Wales, Sydney.

I would also like to thank my husband, Patrick Harris, for his patience, help and encouragement over the 16 years it took to complete the project.

In order to give the reader a sense of ‘being there’, some of the episodes described in this book have been dramatised, but they are based on extensive research. Notes at the end of this book contain extra information, give the source of material, query statements made by other historians or explain what happened subsequently: all of which add to the layers of knowledge, mystery and confusion that accumulate during a walk in the past.

Some people may wonder why there is such emphasis on describing what was happening in the Maori world during Jones’ lifetime, but I hope by the end of the book they will understand.

Was Johnny Jones good or was he bad? I have told the story to the best of my ability, and now I leave you to decide.

Diana Harris

Oakridge Farm

Part One: Adventures and Acquisitions

A hell-hole beyond the seas

Sydney, 1826

It is early morning and across the blue waters of Port Jackson a young man is rowing. He pulls hard on the heavy wooden oars and as he draws nearer we see his boat is full of tree branches, neatly chopped into lengths the better to fit as many as possible into the small space. Since he is moving at a good rate in spite of the load on board, we can assume he is strong. From behind all that can be told of his appearance are his dark curly hair and broad shoulders, but when he turns his head briefly to check his direction we see he is a lad of about seventeen with rosy cheeks the colour of poppies.

He continues to pull on his oars, passing the prison island of Pinchgut. Finally he rounds the grim tower of Fort Macquarie on Bennelong Point and enters Sydney Cove, which is abristle with the masts and riggings of many vessels. He ducks between them and heads for a shallow landing place where with a deft turn of the wrist he manoeuvres his craft as close to the shore as possible. Quickly he hops out of his boat, pulls it further into the shore and empties it of its cargo. Then he gathers up a bundle of firewood that seems too large even for his sturdy frame and staggers with it to one of the storehouses. He carries in three more loads, returns to his boat and this time sluices it out with sea water. Finally he rows over to one of the ships anchored in the bay, where he ships his oars.

Suddenly he turns in our direction with a scowl, as if aware that someone is watching him, and there is a flash in his large dark eyes that tells us anger is an essential part of his being. Then he bangs on the side of the ship and waits for his main day’s work to begin.

*

Johnny Jones was born into one of the most feared and hated places on earth. Sydney was the ‘hell-hole beyond the seas’ where people from Great Britain were sent for such heinous offences as stealing three teaspoons or a handkerchief, or money worth less than 40 shillings (if you stole more than the allotted amount you were hanged).

After the outbreak of the revolution in North America in 1775 the Mother Country could no longer send her convicts there – the colonists refused to accept them, and besides, they now had enough free labour via the slave trade – and so she needed to find somewhere else to offload her unwanted citizens. With the claiming of Terra Australis for the British Empire by Captain James Cook another dumping ground was found, this time even further away from home. In 1788 Governor Phillip arrived with the first of the ships and set up camp, not at the recommended Botany Bay, which was bleak and inhospitable, but in the pretty, north-facing cove he named Sydney, in the harbour called Port Jackson.

In Britain by the end of the 18th century, with industrialisation taking jobs from craftsmen, and the collapse of the rural economy and the enclosure of large tracts of countryside by landowners sending the peasants flooding into the towns, there was a floating population of unemployed people who had no means of supporting themselves other than by stealing. The middle and upper classes were terrified of ‘the mob’, fearing violence and revolution of the kind witnessed across the Channel in France in 1789. And so the government, which largely consisted of property-owners and local squires, decided to deal with the problem by making even the most minor theft of property a criminal offence. Those they did not kill by hanging were transferred in large numbers into prisons and ‘hulks’ – old warships languishing in the harbours – and then transported en masse to Australia in a sort of ‘class-cleansing’ operation.

The convicts were sent out in ships with high, narrow hulls and flat sides, built to transport as many prisoners as possible – never mind their comfort, for who cared if they lived or died. They spent the interminable journey between England and Australia shackled below decks, not seeing the light of day until they arrived in Sydney Cove. Torn from their country of birth and knowing they would never see their loved ones again, those that survived the ordeal blinked at the bright Australian light as they looked around them, petrified of what lay ahead.

They were deposited on the peninsula that jutted out along the western side of Sydney Cove, known as The Rocks. This was where the first convicts had lived in the tents and log huts they were made to put up for shelter. Since then the place had become a warren of narrow, crooked lanes and higgledy-piggledy terraces linked by steps hacked out of the rock, from which the area gained its name. Convicts who behaved themselves and had been given pardons were allowed their own piece of land, so now there squatted on the rocky outcrop tiny stone cottages, shacks, brothels, drinking houses named after English pubs, and grog shops set up in huts made of bark to supply prisoners with rum – illegally, of course.

Newly arrived prisoners (known as ‘government men’, or ‘old lags’ after they had been in Sydney for a while) could be assigned to landowners in the interior who needed their free labour to break in their huge properties. Or they could be housed in the Hyde Park Barracks and sent out each day to work in a chain gang. Dressed in grey and yellow clothing emblazoned with arrows, they were hobbled with weights attached to their ankles by chains, which were tied to their waists and also used to chain each prisoner to the others. They were then forced to march carrying picks and shovels to cut stone or work in the fields outside the town. Others were sent to labour on the roads needed to open up the vast country of New South Wales. Watched over by men with whips, they were yoked like animals to wagons full of gravel and stones from which others shuffled to and fro, barefoot and hobbled by the chains on their ankles, carrying buckets of stones to fill up the holes in the road.

Women were sent out to Australia, not because their crimes were so terrible – in general they were convicted of minor offences – but because the British Government had decided their presence was required to prevent men turning to homosexuality in the mostly male environment of the penal colony. Some women were imprisoned in the notorious Female Factory at Parramatta, but many were assigned as servants in free settlers’ houses, where they were accommodated and fed until they had served out their time.

If the prisoners did not behave they were flogged. This was carried out in public: the offender was tied to a triangle and lashed by a cat o’ nine tails – the ‘cat’ being a six-inch-long piece of ship’s rope with nine ‘tails’ attached, each rope tied with nine knots and tipped at the ends with wax. The cat was whipped many times (25 lashes was a ‘Botany Bay dozen’, a hundred was a ‘Norfolk Dumpling’) across the prisoner’s back until he screamed like an animal and his skin and flesh flew in the faces of those watching. A man newly flogged was known as a ‘redshirt’.

Other punishments included being chained up in solitary confinement on Pinchgut, or being sent to Norfolk Island or Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), where the treatment was legendary in its ferocity.

A prisoner who committed a serious crime was hung. On average about once a week a wooden scaffold was set up on a street corner in The Rocks and a man was made to mount a wooden platform. The charge for which he was being executed was read out, a calico bag was slipped over his head and then the noose. The bolt was drawn and the platform fell. A frenzied struggle from under the bag ensued: a mechanical, shocking jerking of limbs like a puppet in a hideous dance, and then a dead body was left swinging from the beam.

Why, one wonders, did the prisoners not rebel en masse at their treatment? – there were after all enough of them. The answer is probably firstly that the system was carefully set up to prevent any opportunities for mutiny; and secondly that the convicts themselves were anxious to work off their punishment as quickly as possible and put the whole degrading experience behind them. Then they could begin the slow climb back to respectability.

By 1826 the population of Sydney consisted of roughly half convicts and their descendants and half free men, the officials sent out to police the convicts. The free immigrants, known as the Exclusives, despised the ‘tainted’ ones, while the freed prisoners and their children (the Emancipists) hated them in return. Everyone was at each other’s throats, and with the public hangings and floggings and the brutality meted out by a harsh and callous regime, violence was considered acceptable in all walks of life. The only means of escape from this miserable existence was in drink, particularly rum, which was downed neat in half-pint mugs.

Drifting through the shoddy, rubbish-strewn streets of Sydney were the remnants of the first inhabitants – the Aborigines. Bewildered by the inhumane behaviour of the new arrivals to their own kind, driven from their food-gathering places and distraught at the destruction of trees and animals they had held sacred for the 40,000-plus years they had lived on the continent, they too took refuge in drink, but not for the same reasons as the homesick visitors. With the taking of their homeland they had lost their hunting grounds and they were now reduced to selling trifles such as fish and flowers in order to survive.

Then there were the native-born – the children of the prisoners – who were called Currency lads and lasses after the motley currency in use (a mixture of Sterling and Spanish dollars with the holes cut out of them). Currency were practised in the art of bare-knuckle fighting, and street fights were a favourite occupation. Quick to anger, although not usually vindictive to those who provoked them, they were endowed with great strength, and physical toughness was much admired. Unlike their parents, they had no respect for authority and refused to cooperate with the system and become policemen or join the army. Instead they hoped to escape by working on the ships that called into port, or to own land of their own.

In the 1820s power lay in the hands of the large landholders, the officials and the merchants. The Exclusives wanted to preserve class distinctions and shore up their superiority through a monopoly on land ownership, and Ralph Darling, when he arrived to govern the colony in 1825, acceded to their wishes by stopping land grants to native-born Australians and encouraging the immigration of free settlers. To the native-born the free immigrants were ‘bloody foreigners’, and they resented the fact that the British Government was encouraging grants of land to outsiders whereas they, the descendants of those who had laboured to develop the country, albeit against their will, were the true inheritors.

And so you might have seen the Currency lads, noisily gathered together in one of the drinking dens in The Rocks, dressed in their blue jackets and neck scarves and, to the consternation of newcomers, wearing shoes without socks, swinging their pannikins of rum in time as they bellowed out the Rum Song:

Cut yer name across me backbone,

Stretch me skin across a drum,

Iron me up to Pinchgut Island

From today till Kingdom Come!

I will eat your Norfolk Dumpling

Like a juicy Spanish plum,

Even dance the Newgate hornpipe,

If you’ll only give me rum!

And then they would rise – unsteadily – to their feet and with arms around each other raise their mugs to their favourite toast:

‘The land, boys, we live in.’

Sealing days

Johnny Jones was a Currency lad. His father Thomas was a Welshman who was convicted at the Warwick Assizes in 1799, along with another man, for stealing five pieces of Russian linen from Susannah Hobbins of Alcester. For this he was originally sentenced to death, but the punishment was later commuted to transportation for life. He was 26 years old.

On Warwick Assizes, which ended on Thursday last … Tho. Jones and George Happy, for stealing five pieces of Russia linen, belonging Susannah Hobbins, of Alcester, were severally convicted, and received sentence of death …

Fig1 Newspaper notice

Fig.1 The conviction of Thomas Jones. Coventry Mercury, 1 April 1799

By the end of the 18th century Wales was in the throes of the Agricultural Revolution. The ownership of land was being concentrated in the hands of a few and by the 19th century it would become a country of great estates. In order to achieve this, in spite of bitter protests the common land was enclosed, small landowners lost their rights and squatters were evicted. The only hope for many was to emigrate; some went as far afield as America, but some, like Thomas Jones, went to England, in his case apparently to Alcester, not far from the Welsh border.

Thomas was put on the Royal Admiral, which arrived in Sydney in March 1800 after a journey of nearly seven months, during which many of the 300 prisoners and other passengers on board died of disease. How he must have despaired at the thought of never seeing his family and friends again; how he must have mourned for the cosy vales, the lakes and the mountains of the land of his birth when he found himself in a prison town on the barren plain of New South Wales. The irony of the name of his new ‘home’ must have struck him.

After his arrival he was granted an absolute pardon – usually these were given to educated or political prisoners or to those who had performed some special act – and became a policeman. However, he was discovered drunk on the job and was discharged from this position. Thereafter he worked as a waterman, ferrying prisoners, passengers and goods from the ships to the shore. His wife was probably Elizabeth Dailey, who married Thomas Jones in 1807. They had six children: Thomas, John, Edward, William, Mary and Elizabeth, and the family lived in Gloucester Street, in the heart of The Rocks.

Like the other native-born Australians Johnny Jones would have spoken with the colonial accent that had already evolved: a nasal drawl that required the minimal movement of the lips. However, he differed from his fellows in that he was of medium height and dark, whereas generally they were tall and fair, and he did not share in the general predilection for rum.

When we first met Jones he was following in his father’s footsteps, rowing a boat on Sydney Cove. However, this was by no means his first job, as he had already been away on several sealing expeditions. In 1821, at the age of 12, he joined a sealing gang bound for Macquarie Island, a tiny, bleak, treeless place half way between Tasmania and the Antarctic that was, and still is, home to a large variety of wildlife, including fur and elephant seals and several varieties of penguin. Jones was there for nearly two years, coming back to Sydney in 1823, and then taking off almost immediately for nine months on the more salubrious Kangaroo Island, just off the southern coast of Australia. In 1824 he set out for Campbell Island, another subantarctic island in the Southern Ocean, south of New Zealand, to which he returned in 1825.

For a 12-year-old boy, used no doubt though Jones was to harsh conditions, and although he was probably well developed for his age, the experience must have been an eye-opener. The sealers were provided with boats in which they rowed around the coastlines amongst the crashing spray, landing on slippery rocks and clambering round them to reach the ledges where the seals lay sunning themselves. They crept up on the sleek creatures and clubbed them on the snout before the seals had a chance to attack them. Once the seals were killed, the sealers sliced the skins from the still-warm bodies and carried them, dripping with blood, into the boats. When they had finished for the day, stinking of blood and guts from their gory toils and frozen to the bone, they made a campsite on any flat place they could find among the rocks and processed the skins, either by stretching them out to dry, or by curing them with salt, folding them into a parcel and packing them into barrels. Then they lit a fire, on which they cooked seal meat, their main means of sustenance, and sheltered for the night in a cave, a hut made out of any materials they could find to hand, or simply under an upturned boat.

The skins of the fur seals were exported to North China, where the soft under-fur was used for clothing, or to London, where they were popular when made into hats. Most of the seal population on the mainlands of Australia and New Zealand had already disappeared after hundreds of thousands were slaughtered during the first 10 years of the century; and it was only when the shortage of skins in the 1820s resulted in higher prices worldwide that there was renewed interest. However, it meant that any seals left would be in the more remote and inaccessible places. To us, living in a time when seals are a protected species, it seems an inhumane and unnecessary slaughter, but in those days it was simply regarded as an industry, like a freezing works or a tannery, except of course it was entirely without control or regulations.

Among the sealers there would have been the camaraderie of those who faced extreme hardship together, but there would have also been times when, in the company of the roughest and most depraved of men, brawls occurred and young Johnny Jones would have had to defend himself and his catch. He would have given as good as he got. In the early 19th century fighting was a popular sport, particularly in The Rocks, where it was necessary for survival. Jones would have grown up scrapping with the urchins in the back streets, and when he was older, the street fighting would have been more skilled and more vicious. After his exploits as a sealer his huge hands were heavily calloused and, together with his `fighter’s physique’ – a solid build, quick feet and a chin you could crack iron on – and his quick temper, he had a reputation for being a man you would hesitate to cross.

However, he was not just a brawler. Unlike his elder brother Tom, who could not even pen his own name, Jones could read and write. He may have been self-taught – at any rate his spelling was definitely of the ‘invented’ kind and punctuation seems to have been unknown to him – or else someone, perhaps his mother, may have seen to it that this boy of above average intelligence received some schooling for a few years at least and sent him to one of the few schools run by the Anglican church for disadvantaged young people.

Now, back in Sydney, armed with some rudimentary skills and the money he had earned from sealing, Jones was ready to make his way in the world. But what kind of world awaited him, and who were the men who might serve as role models?

The emancipated and their children were beginning to carve out a future for themselves. And they now had a champion in William Charles Wentworth. The bastard son of a convict woman and the colony’s surgeon Darcy Wentworth (who had aristocratic connections but had been accused of highway robbery when trying to restore the family fortune and had made his own way to Botany Bay), William Charles was not the usual run-of -the-mill Currency lad. Wentworth had gone to England to study law and had now returned, determined to assert the rights of the native-born Australians. He began by founding the Australian, a newspaper intended to be the mouthpiece of the Emancipists.

Then he challenged Governor Darling over the affair of Sudds and Thompson. These two soldiers committed an offence so they could escape from the army and were sentenced to be transported out of Sydney. However, after pressure from the Exclusives Darling stepped in, saying the soldiers’ actions had put the army in a bad light – i.e., they had committed an unforgivable sin in preferring to be convicts rather than soldiers – and they were sent to prison and bound in heavy chains and a spiked collar. Sudds, who was already ill, died after a few days in prison.

Wentworth insisted, without success, that Darling be impeached. He then used the occasion to demand trial by jury for all and a house of assembly. ‘Is it not every Englishman’s right to vote, to sit on a jury and to be judged by his peers?’ he asked. ‘The Exclusives are determined to deny this right to a prisoner even after he has served his time – and to his children as well! Shall these hypocrites – these yellow snakes who poison our colony – be allowed to inflict on the unfortunate convict a punishment infinitely greater than that to which he has already been sentenced?’

Another leading figure who was also active in demanding basic rights for all was Samuel Terry. Terry had been transported for stealing 400 pairs of stockings (a matter no doubt sniggered over in the drawing rooms of the Exclusives) and had done his time cutting stone for the Parramatta Gaol and the Female Factory, and had been flogged as well, for neglect of duty. But as soon as he was free Terry had persevered until now he had a huge fortune, a brewery, 20,000 acres of land, large commercial premises in Sydney, and a flour mill. Some said he had gained his wealth from capitalising on his fellow men’s weakness for rum, allowing them credit to drink as much as they liked for weeks on end and afterwards taking what land they owned as payment – but then people would say such a thing in Sydney, where it was assumed that if an Emancipist prospered he could only have succeeded by fraud. Whatever the means he gained it, the success of the ‘Botany Bay Rothschild’ was a legend in New South Wales and an inspiration to young men like Johnny Jones.

In the meantime, Sydney was changing. It was becoming more and more popular as a port of call for foreign whaling ships, which came for repairs and supplies and to allow their crews some ‘rest and recreation’. Ships were built in the dockyards on the west side of the city and cargoes of wool, meat and wheat were exported. The Rocks area was being transformed as warehouses, bond stores and shipping offices sprang up along the shoreline and merchants and traders were ousting the government officials and dominating the life of the town.

The penal settlement was turning into a vibrant, bustling city where there was money to be made, and young Jones was waiting for the moment when he could seize his opportunity.

But there was also another matter on his mind.

Sarah

Her name was Sarah Sizemore. She was a year or two older than he, with soft blue eyes and a round, rather solemn face framed by long, shining, dark brown hair that was neatly parted in the middle and coiled up at the back of her head. And in spite of the demure demeanour sometimes there was a fierce, wayward look in her eyes. By all accounts Jones adored her.

What a handsome couple they must have made as, like the other young lovers, they walked together in the grounds of the Government Domain – she with her dignified bearing and soft white skin, and Jones with his athletic physique and dark good looks, toughened by the years of sealing. During these strolls they probably told each other their stories, for everyone in Sydney had a tale to tell (not necessarily the true version) of how they came to be there.

Sarah

Fig.2 Sarah in later life. Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hakena, University of Otago, 75/46 SO6-65k

Sarah and her brother Richard were both born in Bristol. Their mother, Charity Sizemore, was convicted of receiving 350 yards of stolen cloth and sentenced to seven years. She was transported in the Maria in 1819; Sarah, at the age of 11, accompanied her mother while her brother was sent out on a different ship. The vessel on which Sarah and her mother sailed carried only women convicts, but even so it must have been an ordeal that would live forever in her memory.

Charity Sizemore was selected by Captain Piper to be his wife’s maid, and she served out her time working for one of the wealthiest families in Sydney. She was therefore presumably regarded as being of good character, and certainly Sarah must have thought highly of her mother, for she was to name her eldest daughter after her.

*

For Jones it must have been an exciting time. As well as deepening his relationship with Sarah, he was taking the first steps along the road to making his fortune. In October 1826 the Warspite, a first ship of the line in the Royal Navy and the largest vessel to visit Sydney to that date, arrived in the cove, returning the salute from the fort with a salvo of 17 guns. Its commodore, Sir James Brisbane, was suffering from a debilitating illness and in fact died while the ship was in port. As a result procedures on board might not have been adhered to as strictly as usual: at any rate, if later accounts are to be believed, Jones gained a remunerative contract with this ship, most likely to supply the crew on board with provisions.

In town there was a buzz of excitement. Noisy groups of sailors just off the frigate, dressed in bright blue jackets, red waistcoats and black tarpaulin hats with long ribbons dangling down, were swaggering through the streets while on the ship carpenters, armourers and sailmakers set about carrying out repairs. The amounts required for provisioning a vessel as large as the Warspite were enormous, as the ship’s log testifies: Monday: 540 lb soft bread, 546 lb fresh beef, 273 lb vegetables; Tuesday: 646 lb soft bread, 600 lb fresh beef, 300 lb vegetables… Other items such as tea, cocoa, sugar, flour and tobacco, spirits and rum were also required. In order to pay for the initial supplies before being recompensed, Jones may have used his hardwon earnings from sealing. At any rate he must have acquitted himself well, because he also secured a contract with another ship, the Volage, probably as a result of recommendation.

Finally both frigates were ready to depart for South America, and hundreds of pounds of oatmeal, flour, suet and raisins, soap and lemon juice, as well as casks of rum and arrack, were ferried across the water to be stowed in the holds of the ships. Before they departed Jones probably obtained a letter of recommendation to show to the next naval vessel, the Rainbow, which was due to arrive the following month.

*

Jones’ horizons were expanding in other directions too. He was beginning to be aware of the farming operations outside Sydney and that a better world existed than the dog-eat-dog environment of The Rocks and the brutality of the sealing trade. He may well have been introduced to the life led by the Australian ‘gentry’ by his friend William Charles Wentworth when he