ACTIVE mission brig 1808

The full index of our ship stamp archive
Post Reply
Online
aukepalmhof
Posts: 7771
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:28 am

ACTIVE mission brig 1808

Post by aukepalmhof » Wed Dec 21, 2011 8:17 pm

$1.05
On 25 December 1814 Yorkshire-born Samuel Marsden, a Sydney based Anglican, conducted the first Christian service on New Zealand soil at Rangihoua in the Bay of Islands. The Wesleyans (Methodist) followed soon after the Anglicans. They worked closely together until the arrival of Frenchman Jeane Baptiste Pompallier who celebrated the first Roman Catholic mass in the Hokianga in January 1838.
40c
The word of God, European style, spread south from the Bay of Islands, borne by missionaries some of whom were remarkable men - William Colenso, Henry and William Williams, George Augustus Selwyn and Octavius Hadfield. The missionaries were among the earliest purchasers of land from the Maori. The early mission stations were established in the North Island springing up in Kaitaia, Thames, the Waikato, Rotorua and Tauranga
The stamps tell the story of one of the first recorded Christmas services in New Zealand by Reverend Samuel Marsden at Rangihoura Bay in the Bay of Islands in 1814. Each stamp illustration is complimented by words from the New Zealand Christmas carol 'Te Harinui' which was written to commemorate the event.
New Zealand Post.

Both stamps show in the missionary vessel ACTIVE on which Samuel Marsden arrived in New Zealand in December 1814. I could not find a painting or drawing on which the vessel was depict, and I am not sure if there is one. The vessel depict most probably is a vessel of that timeframe.

The ACTIVE arrived in Sydney on 29 January 1812 from Calcutta, where it states she was registered and built. Her owner is given then as J.B.McHugo.
Before she arrived in Sydney she made a call in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). The owner given was a strange person, his real name was Jonathan Burke Hugo and he arrived on board the ACTIVE on 01 January 1811 (Shipping arrivals and departures, Tasmania 1803-1833) at Port Dalrymple, River Tamar, Tasmania.
At that time he was calling himself Mc Hugo. While at Port Dalrymple, Hugo almost succeeded in Persuading the commandant at Port Dalrymple, Lieut-Colonel Gordon, to surrender his command, Gordon was to quote Governor Macquarie’s official dispatch ”so far imposed on by the wild and extravagant nonsense of Mr. McHugo as to imagine him to be one of the Royal Family Incog. And possessed of authority at pleasure to supersede all Governors, Commanders, etc. etc. wherever he pleased to visit”. Other officers at Launceston intervened and sent Hugo to Sydney under a military guard (evidently in the ACTIVE). There he was examined by a medical board which pronounced him to be” in a state of outrageous insanity”. In Sydney the ACTIVE and what remained of her cargo (Indian goods), wine and spirits) were sold and the realised sum of the sale was sent to Alexander & Co., of Calcutta (from whom McHugo had obtained the ACTIVE and its cargo. It seems that Alexander & Co were either the creditors or the real owners. “Mad “ McHugo had either been given away the cargo, or selling it at giveaway prices at Launceston. What happened with MrHugo afterwards, he was sent in April 1812 to Calcutta and confined for two years in a mental asylum. Eventually he reached London where in 1817, he was bombarding the Colonial Office with petitions. He claimed to be descended from Earl Bothwell and Mar Queen of Scots, and to be rightful heir to the Crown of England. He declared however, that he would be content with “a Moderate Subsistence”. Whether he obtained one or what happened to him after 24 July 1817 has never been discovered.

The ACTIVE was then purchased (at Sydney) by four gentlemen of Sydney (one of them Charles Hook) in May or June 1812.
In June 1812 the same ACTIVE master Captain Robert Leslie, owner Charles Hook & Co., sailed from Sydney for the River Derwent, Hobart and New Zealand: her cargo being 4000 gallons of wine, and sundry merchandise. On 28 January 1814 the ACTIVE arrived at Sydney with a cargo of Black oil (whale oil but not as valuable as sperm whale oil) from the River Derwent, as master given Mason, but it may be incorrect, and underneath it gives the names of two masters, Johnstone and Dillon: and it mentions that she sailed from Sydney on 4 March 1814 for the Derwent and the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. It is quite obvious that we dealing with the ACTIVE bought by Mr. Marsden.

The brig ACTIVE was bought around February 1814 from a Sydney merchant for £1,400 by the Reverend Samuel Marsden (1784-1838). She was rigged as a brig, tonnage given as 120 tons.
Ships of Australia and New Zealand before 1850 gives that she was built in Calcutta in 1808/09.
The actual ownership has not been elucidated, however Robert Cambell of Sydney was agent for the vessel from the time she arrived in Sydney January 1812 and ultimately he became the owner although the registration was never transferred to an Australian port and appears to have remained in Calcutta.

To fit her out for her new role as missionary vessel Marsden spend an other £500.
She set sail under command of Captain Peter Dillon for her first voyage loaded with government stores via Hobart to the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, on 4 (14) March 1814. Captain Peter Dillon was an Irish sailor of fortune who made the French Government Chevalier of the Legion of Honour later, for his part in clearing up the mystery of the disappearance of the ship La Pereuse the L’ASTRLABE and the L’Boussole. Dillon on one of his voyages, obtained some metal articles of French manufacture at the island Tucopia, which the natives of that island had obtained from the natives of the Santa Cruz Group.

Marsden who was not on board this dangerous voyage was refused permission to go to New Zealand by Governor Lachlan MacQuarie.
In his place went two lieutenants Thomas Kendall and William Hall.
Marsden instructions to Captain Dillon for the first voyage was to have a friendly approach to the New Zealanders (Maori), to avoid fights and quarrels at all cost, and not allow any native woman on the ACTIVE.
When the Active was at sea Captain Dillon found out that the vessel sailed very poorly upon the wind. She arrived at the Bay of Islands on 10 June. In a note given in the Bay of Islands Shipping Arrivals and Departures 1803-1840.
Marsden wrote later: I waited more than three years and no master of a vessel would venture for fear of his ship and crew falling a sacrifice to the natives.
At length I purchased a brig called the ACTIVE, Mr. (now Count Dillon) who afterwards went in search of La Pereuse, was then in Sydney (1814) and I engaged him to take the command of the ACTIVE.
She was back at Sydney on 2 August 1814, loaded with flax and spars, and the Maori Chiefs Ruatara, Hongi and Korokoro.
The first voyage had a return of £300, while the running cost of the vessel was £1500 an annum, so the future did not look so bright.
On 28 November the ACTIVE under command of Captain Thomas Hansen, with Marsden on board sailed from Sydney, and after a rough crossing (Marsden was the whole trip seasick) across the Tasman Sea on 16 December the Three Kings Islands of New Zealand’s north cape were sighted.
Some crewmembers landed near the North Cape on 17 December, but Marsden did not leave the vessel. On the 20 December he landed at Matauri Bay. The next day the ACTIVE sailed to the Bay of Islands and anchored in a cove opposite Rangihoua. On Thursday December 22, just as the day was beginning to appear we found ourselves off Point Pocock, the northern entrance to the Bay of Islands. After entering the harbour they fired a salute with our great guns and musketry, as mark of respect to Chief Duaterra, as well as to impress upon the minds of the natives that we were at peace and friendship with them.

At this place Marsden founded the first mission station. For building the station he needed timber and with the ACTIVE he sailed on 27 December to Kawakawa where white pine was found about 12 miles upstream. With the help of the local Maoris for cutting and loading he loaded the ACTIVE with timber and sailed back to his mission station.
13 January 1815 the ACTIVE sailed with Marsden on board away from the Bay of Islands for a voyage along the coast, he was back a few days later (22 January).
Then the ACTIVE loaded timber of which Marsden did believe there was a market for in Sydney, and on the 24 February she sailed from the Bay of Islands.
22 March 1815 the overloaded ACTIVE arrived in Sydney.

Her other voyages to the Bay of Islands are:
18 May she returned in the Bay of Islands from Sydney, after arrival loaded spars, flax and sailed on 11 July for Sydney.
Returned 23 February 1816 from Sydney, afterwards she sailed for Tahiti to load a cargo of pork.
28 November arrived at the Bay of Islands with a load of pork, loaded spars and sailed for Port Jackson on 9 December.
23 February 1818 under command of Captain Thompson she arrived from Tahiti with pork, loaded at the Bay of Islands pine logs and sailed on 09 March for Sydney.
19 June returned from Sydney, loaded spars and flax, sailed 9 July for Tahiti.
09 November returned from Tahiti and loaded timber planks and sailed for Sydney on 08 December.
05 May 1819 returned from Sydney, loaded 3 tons of pork, 5246 ft. planks and 1 ton of salted fish, sailed 17 June for Sydney.
03 January 1821 arrived with mission supplies, was then used in the fishery (whaling) sailed 22 January with 30 tuns oil.
22 January 1822 arrived from Sydney with mission supplies, loaded timber and sailed 28 January for Hobart.
ACTIVE may have been returned in March briefly from whaling.
The last time I found an entry of the ship was on 31 March when she arrived from Sydney, still under command of Joseph Thompson and she sailed on 8 April, destination not mentioned.

1822 was she still used by Marsden.
Last time that the vessel is mentioned in Lloyds List of July 7th 1826 when she was under command of Captain Jameson, and bound for Bengal from New South Wales, she was spoken with on 12 February 1826 in a position 38 degrees south, 121 degrees east by the LEANDER bound for New South Wales.

She was sold in Calcutta after she became damaged when setting out for a voyage to Sydney in 1826. I could not find out of Marsden still was the owner, also could not find her fate, maybe wrecked or slowly rotten away, when not more used. She was a small vessel and tracks of her records are difficult to find.

New Zealand 1989 $1.05 sg1509, scott954. 1997 40c sg2097, scott1452.
Attachments
tmp11B.jpg
tmp11C.jpg
tmp11D.jpg

Post Reply