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Translated from the French* by S. Percy Smith, F.R.G.S.
[Read before the Auckland Institute, 22nd November, 1909.]
We left the “Astrolabe” off Tokomaru Bay, north of Gisborne, after having visited Tologa Bay (see Transactions, vol. xli, p. 130), and will now take up her further voyage to the north, and describe the visit of the French expedition to the Waitemata, the present site of Auckland, in 1827.
After leaving Tokomaru there are no incidents of particular interest until the corvette reached the Great Barrier Island, though she sighted White Island and many of the other groups of islands in the Bay of Plenty, and nearly suffered shipwreck on the Mercury Islands during a violent storm.
As in the previous cases, the translator's notes appear within square brackets[].
D'Urville's intercourse with the Ngatai-Paoa Tribe of Maoris at the Tamaki is of peculiar interest; and, moreover, his meeting with Rangituke's expediton at Whangarei has served to fix the exact date of an important event in the history of the Auckland isthmus, the full history of which is to be found in “The Peopling of the North” and the “Wars of the Northern against the Southern Tribes in the Nineteenth Century,” published by the Polynesian Society.
With regard to D'Urville's claim to have been the discoverer of the Manukau Harbour, we must, in fairness, deprive the celebrated Frenchman of that honour, for it was Marsden (with whom was the Rev. Mr. Butler) who first visited those waters, as the following extract from his MS. journal, now in the possession of Dr. Hocken, who has very kindly sent me a copy, will prove: “November 3rd, 1820. … when I went to the top of a very high conical hill [Mount Wellington, or Maunga-rei], near the settlement [Mauinaina, across the water from Panmure]. From its summit may be seen both the western and the eastern shores of New Zealand. One river [the Manukau] which ran into the western ocean seemed to join the Wyetematta [Waitemata] and the Magoea [Mokoia; really Tamaki, Mokoia being the basin south of Panmure] Rivers, as I could not see any land that separated them [Otahuhu isthmus would be invisible from Mount Wellington]. On inquiry, I learnt that one river [Wai]uku] which I saw ran towards Wyekotta [Waikato], and the other was called Manukou [Manukau], which fell into the sea on the west side.”. … On the 9th November, “wishing to ascertain whether the River Manukou did unite with the Magoea River or the Wyetematta, I determined to proceed immediately to Manukou to satisfy myself on that head. … We reached Manukou in the evening. … We found an extensive harbour, and saw the Heads at the distance of about 5 leagues. … I informed him that the object of my visit was to examine the Harbour of Manukou, and that we intended
[Footnote] * Voyage de la corvette L' Astrolabe, exécuté par ordre du Roi, pendant les années 1826, 1827, 1828, sous le commandement de M. J. Dumont D'Urville (Paris, 1833), vol. ii, p. 111et seq.
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to go down to the Heads to see if there was an entrance for ships.” … 10th November: “Though the communication between the western and eastern seas is not entirely complete, yet it is very nearly so. … In the Manukou there are very extensive shoals and sand-banks, but there appeared to be a channel of deep water, but which we were unable to examine in the canoe from the strength of the tide, which occasioned too great a sea to venture into it with safety. The entrance into the harbour is also narrow, and it is probable a bar may be found on the outside, but this we could not ascertain, as it would not be safe to go out to sea in a small canoe when the swell is so great; within the Heads we had 10 fathoms of water.”
The above clearly proves Marsden to have been the first discoverer of Manukau. Apparently he went down the harbour to beyond Puponga Point, as the soundings and other things prove. Marsden was there six years and a half before the “Astrolabe” entered the Waitemata, a fact which D'Urville could not have been aware of, for the above quotations are not printed in the “Missionary Register,” and it was from that source that D'Urville obtained the other information as to Marsden's doings which he so freely quotes in his third volume. Judging from D'Urville's observations scattered throughout his works, he would be the last man to deprive a prior discoverer of the credit which is his due.
With respect to the name “Astrolabe Channel,” Which D'Urville gave to what is now known as the Waiheke Channel, his name must also give place to another which had previously been given to it by Major Cruise, of the 84th Regiment, who, in the colonial schooner “Prince Regent,” belonging to the New South Wales Government, under the command of Captain Kent, entered the Rangitoto Channel on the 21st August, 1820, and thence passes along the Waiheke Channel to Coromandel, where H.M. storeship of that name was then taking in spars for the Admiralty. On her return north the schooner again passed through the channel, and left by way of the Motu-ihi Channel on the 3rd September, 1820. Cruise, in his “Journal of a Ten Months' Residence in New Zealand,” p. 209, says, “The passage above mentioned was called ‘Prince Regent's Channel,’ because that vessel was the first by which it was known to have been navigated.” Marsden also passed up the Waiheke Channel on his way to Kaipara from Coromandel two days before the “Prince Regent” first entered it, but he does not appear to have given it a name, and therefore Cruise's name, “Prince Regent's Channel,” should stand.