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Rovers of the Brig “Bee”
The Story of a Lawless Cruise in the Old Pacific

(By James Cowan.)

In the days when Judge Tomahawk made and administered the common law in New Zealand there was a small square-rigger by the name of the Bee trading out of Sydney to these cannibal islands. She was a brig of 135 tons. That is just a little larger than the scow Echo, last of the coastwise craft to use sail in and out of Wellington Harbour; she still rejoices the hearts of ship-lovers by working the port under canvas. The Bee voyaged to and from across the Tasman Sea for more than twenty years, an unusually long life for a ship in those restless times, when Maori cutting-off enterprise and the peril of all but uncharted and quite unlighted coasts made shipowning a precarious business. Under one owner and another, and a succession of hard-case skippers, this busy trafficker roved about New Zealand and its off-shore islands wherever there was a cargo of flax to be picked up from the Maoris in exchange for muskets and gunpower, or a load of oil and bone from the shore-whalers, or a lot of skins from the seal-hunting gangs. In her spare time she went whaling, like many other South Sea traders of that day. An old-time whaler at Kaikoura, big Tom Jackson, who had been in the whale-chasing business for sixty years, told me that his father, Captain James Jackson, landed from the Bee, which he commanded at that time, at Te Awaiti, just inside Tory Channel, in the early Eighteen-twenties and founded a shore station there. They are still whaling there; the station has been in continuous existence, New Zealand's oldest industry, for about 115 years.

In April, 1845, the brig was a British transport for a run which must be about the shortest trooping voyage on record. There was an alarm of Maori raids in the Hutt Valley, and Major Richmond, commanding the troops in Wellington, ordered out a detachment of fifty men of the 58th Regiment to garrison the newly-built stockade, called Fort Richmond, at the Lower Hutt. The Bee happened to be lying off Wellington town, ready for sea. She was commandeered for urgent service. The soldiers were sent on board and she made sail for Petone beach, six miles away, and landed the heavily equipped Tommies there, to march the remaining mile to the stockade. It saved the 58th warriors a weary trudge along the rocky beach road from Wellington. The trouble had been begun by the military authorities who evicted the Maoris of the Makahi-nuku village, and destroyed the cultivations and burned down the pa. In natural retaliation the natives raided the settlers and looted their homes.

There was a certain cruise of the Bee that had no official approval. It is a story of her unregenerate days and of an owner who appears to have had all the makings of a first-rate pirate.

In the year 1833 a Hobart Town man named William Cuthbert was owner of the little brig. He is said to have been a time-expired convict, and he was commonly known as “Lincoln Bill.” How he obtained sufficient money to buy the Bee is not in the records, but at any rate he acquired possession of her, and off he sailed to the land of the Maori to trade for flax and pigs, oil and general produce which at that time of day included smoke-dried tattooed heads (trade term, “baked heads”). He seemed to have made a name for himself as a hard customer, the toughest of the tough. Back in Hobart Town again, he sailed so close to the wind in the matter of certain commercial transactions that he was arrested. The charges concerned goods that he was accused of stealing, and debts evaded, and he was lodged in gaol. It looked as if Bill was about due for another spell in the chain-gang.

The brig, which was lying in Adventure Bay, had been seized by the authorities for debts owing by Cuthbert—sails and stores—but presently was cleared at the Customs for Sydney by Captain William Stewart, whom Cuthbert had engaged in New Zealand as navigating master. This was done on order from Cuthbert just before his arrest.

“You get to sea, and wait for me off Maria Island,” said the owner when he went on shore. “I'll get an extra boat Business in town.” That business as it developed, ended in an engagement at the lock-up, but Mr. Cuthbert was a very clever man.

Captain Stewart made sail out of port. He was lying-to off the island rendezvous four days later (September 2, 1833) when a boat under sail was sighted approaching before a fine fair breeze.

“Owner's in her, sir,” said the mate, Mr. Clementson, after a long look through his spyglass. “Four men with him.”

“Extra hands, or passengers maybe,” said the master.

The boat was soon alongside, and when the men were out of her she was hoisted up and stowed inboard.

“Here's a gentleman from Hobart Town who is taking a cruise with us for the good of his health,” said Cuthbert, with a jerk of his thumb at one of his companions.

Captain Stewart was puzzled to see that the gentleman who was bound on a health trip was clothed in the uniform of a Hobart Town policeman. The gentleman, moreover, looked very hot and angry.

“If you're the master of this ship,” the bluecoated stranger said in a high excited voice, “I'll have you know this is an outrage; it's piracy! I'm an officer of the law, and this man is in my custody! I'm responsible for him, and I must demand that you take the ship back into Hobart Town and set me on shore with my prisoner. What's more, he's brought three convicts with him.”

Lincoln Bill laughed loud and long and slapped his leg. “D'ye hear that, Mister Stewart?” he said. “What d'ye think of that for a joke? He says I'm in his custody! Does it look like it, Mister?”

The brig was under all sail now, slipping along to the eastward. Stewart and his mate had a look at the three strange hands who had come on board with the owner and a man of the law. They had got rid of some parts of page 18 page 19 their prison costume, but the convict mark was plain. Stewart looked to his owner for an explanation. “Who are these fellows?” he asked. “They have no right to be on board.”

Owner Bill laughed again. “These gentlemen,” he said, “are my friend's official staff. They're his ay-de-congs, as you might say. You might find some gentle exercise for them for'ard in the meantime.”

Perhaps had Captain Stewart been a strong character he would have put the brig about and steered for Hobart Town. But it is extremely doubtful whether his orders would have been obeyed. Half the crew were ex-convicts, and there were the three escapees to side with their deliverer from the chain-gang and the lash. So Stewart followed the path of least resistance, and when Lincoln Bill asked him to set his course for Cook Strait, New Zealand, instead of for Sydney, he fell in with his owner's wishes, privately reserving right of action till later on.

This Captain Stewart was a mariner of some celebrity in the New Zealand trade. Stewart Island was named after him. In 1809 he was first mate of the sealing ship Pegasus, which sailed around the island and so first established its insularity, and he mapped the coast for the commander, Captain Chace. In 1826, he was master of the schooner Prince of Denmark, trading for flax and sealskins. He must not be confused with the notorious Captain Stewart, of the brig Elizabeth, old Ruaparaba's transport from Kapiti Island on an expedition of treachery and slaughter and cannibalism to Banks Peninsula in 1831, an affair almost as shocking as the horrors of modern civilised warfare. But there was a link between the Bee and the ship of illrepute, for the mate, Clementson, had been mate of the Elizabeth on that cruise.

The Bee sailed through Cook Strait before the fresh westerly, and put in at Port Underwood, a snug haven for the traders and whalers, on the southern coast. Then she sailed up along the East Coast of the North Island and presently looked in at Tauranga Harbour. By this time Lincoln Bill had quarrelled with the mate Clementson, and he determined to get rid of him. “I think we have seen enough of each other, Mister,” he said. He put a pistol to the mate's head and ordered him on shore. So there we leave Mr. Clementson, dumped on the beach of the Dangerous Land, with barely more than the clothes he wore. From a Ms. narrative left by Hans Tapsell of Maketu, I am able to fill in his few years of life in Maori Land. Tapsell engaged him to trade at Matamata with a stock of goods buying flax to be shipped from Tauranga to Sydney. He and another adventurer were drowned down the coast trying to cross over the bar at Matata in a whaleboat.

“Lay your course for the Society Islands, Mr. Stewart,” was Cuthbert's next request, when the anchor was got up and the brig steered out into the Bay of Plenty. “We'll have a look at the Kanaka girls, and then we'll see if the Bee can't make a little honey along the Spanish Main.”

It was a bacchanalian little Bee from now on. Lincoln Bill made merry with his convict friends. He sent bottles of grog forward, and got out his fiddle and played while the barefooted scoundrels danced on the deck. The round and jolly moon came up, like a great golden melon. The silhouetted black brig, with its capering crew, looked a thorough pirate ship.

“At it you go, you rascals!” Bill shouted as he sat at the break of the poop and sawed away at jiggetty tunes for the slapping soles. “Heel and toe! All we want now's a few black-eyed Susans, but we'll pick ‘em up in Papeete all right.”

Drinking and fiddling, with now and again a fight among the forecastle hands, the Bee buzzed on through the tropics, the south-east Trade making a steady leading wind for her.

The East Pacific island of Rurutu came in sight on the starboard bow early one morning in October. The brig hove-to off the little mountain-isle, and lowered a boat at the entrance to the lagoon. Now Mr. Cuthbert gave two of his erstwhile boon companions a surprise. These runaway convicts he ordered into the boat. “Get your dunnage and off with you,” he said. “I want no lags in this ship.” He landed them on the beach, blithely told them to go to hell, bought some fruit from the islanders, and got under way again. How the marooned pair fared I do not know, but their lot in Rurutu would conceivably not be hard. A stray white man in Rurutu would at any rate not be cooked and eaten; it was an isle of pleasant hospitable Polynesians.

A few days later the Bee anchored in Papeete Harbour, Tahiti. There, after a lively week, the owner got rid of the stolen constable and the remaining convict member of the “staff.” He kept them on board until he had sufficiently refreshed himself and his crew, then just before the anchor was lifted he sent them on board the American whaling ship Erie, which was lying in the lagoon. It was a mutually convenient arrangement between him and the Erie's captain. The whaleship wanted men to replace some runaways before she resumed the cruise. Half an hour later the brig was slipping through the reef entrance.

“Where away now,’ Mr. Cuthbert,” asked the sailing master.

“Oh, I think we'll try the Sandwich Islands,” said the owner. “I still have my trade to sell. There's more chance there than on the American coast.”

So up into the North Pacific buzzed the Bee, steering for Hawaii. Three weeks later she was in Honolulu Harbour; it was more widely known then page 20 as Oahu, the name of the island.

Captain Stewart now saw his way to get clear of Lincoln Bill before he became more deeply involved in the owner's doubtful cruisings. He wrote to the British Consul stating the facts. The Consul arrested the brig, but Bill got away in a schooner for the American coast, he slipped off at daybreak just in time to avoid capture and the calaboose.

And here Mr. Cuthbert, the potential pirate, disappears from our ken. There was a report on the New Zealand coast a year or two later—it reached Tauranga and Tapsell's station at Maketu—that he had been hanged in Peru. But it was never confirmed.

The Bee was sent back to Sydney by the Consul under the command of the much relieved Captain Stewart. There she was sold for the benefit of Cuthbert's creditors, so that they got something of their own back after all. Captain Stewart was back in the New Zealand trade again before long—but not in the Bee.

As for the abducted constable, it may be that he reached his beloved Hobart Town safely after all his troubles, richer in experience at any rate, with a taste of blubber-hunting in a hard Yankee ship to remember for the rest of his life. I do not know whether he ever saw the coast of Tasmania again; but if he did it is extremely unlikely that he received promotion for his exploit in getting run off with by Lincoln Bill of the Bee brig. It is even possible his superiors summarily put him into the hard-labour gang. A constable's life was not far removed from a prisoner's in the bad old days of Convict Land.

Have you ever, when “hiking”—“on your lonesome”—found yourself in some spot remote from shops or pubs, with not a soul in sight (or likely to be) and suddenly had a hankering for a smoke—only to discover you have but one match left? With what care you strike that last match and shield the flame with your cupped hands! With what relief you get your pipe aligh—perhaps? By the way, the best tobacco you can have when hiking is “toasted”—the genuine article—because it burns away to the last shred and you can smoke for hours without getting a sore tongue or irritated throat. It is, moreover, of delicious flavour and rare bouquet, and being practically without nicotine (eliminated by toasting) it is safe smoking. No wonder the five (and only genuine) toasted brands, Cut Plug No. 10 (Bullshead) Cavendish, Navy Cut No.3 (Bulldog), Riverhead Gold and desert Gold appeal so irresistibly to the smoker, whether he is hiking or “lazing,” afoot or astride, afloat or ashore, at home or abroad.^*