Sealers' War - Effect On Sealing

Effect On Sealing

These hostilities and the diminution of seal populations saw a decline in sealing ventures to southern New Zealand. It seems this was unknown to Captain Abimeleck Riggs of the American sealer General Gates who landed a gang at Stewart Island late in 1819. He had a troubled cruise and it wasn't until 1821 that he returned to the gang's relief when he dropped a second gang and then a third at Chalky Inlet. The second gang was attacked by Māori in October that year when six of its men were captured, taken north up the west coast where eventually four were killed and eaten. Meanwhile the gang at Chalky had left a boy looking after their stores who was also attacked by Māori and eaten. The rest were pursued by Māori and two killed before they came across Captain Edwardson of the Snapper in Chalky Inlet. Their pursuers included women and dogs under the leadership of "Te Pehi" "Topi" and "Te Whera". With them were two Pākehā-Māori, James Caddell, originally captured from the Sydney Cove, now acculturated to Māori society, tattooed and married to a high-born Māori woman, and James Stuart who had come with the General Gates, with an aboriginal wife and children. (She had gone into hiding after they were attacked by Māori and one of the children was killed. Eventually Stuart found her and took her and one child to Sydney.) Edwardson now took Caddell to Sydney where his arrival caused a sensation in 1823 and where a peace was brokered. Thereafter sealing resumed although it soon petered out again because the animal populations had been severely depleted.

The Sealers' War - really a rolling feud - may have seen seventy-four people killed, among them forty-three Pākehā, or non-Māori. William Tucker was not a cause of it, as has previously been thought, but one of its victims. The Creed manuscript clearly reveals the original cause, invisible to history for nearly two hundred years, identifies the later triggers of particular events while observing they were all consequences of the first theft and its revenge, often visited on people unaware of what had set these events in motion. When people of different cultures clash they are quick to react against any member of the other group, regardless of personal responsibility. The Sealers' War is a classic example of the tendency of incident to turn into inter-communal strife at the interface of cultural contact.