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They were varied by tragedies on a larger scale. In 1809 the Boyd, a ship of 500 tons John Thompson, master had discharged a shipload of English convicts in Sydney. The captain decided to take in a cargo of timber in New Zealand, and accordingly sailed to Whangaroa, a romantic inlet to the north of the Bay of Islands. Amongst the crew were several Maoris.
George according to his own account merely replied that when they reached New Zealand the captain would see that he was a chief. But he vowed vengeance, and on reaching Whangaroa showed his stripes to his kinsfolk, as Boadicea hers to the Britons of old. The tribesmen, with the craft of which the apparently frank and cheerful Maori has so ample a share, quietly laid their plans.
From June to November the devoted missionary passed up and down the waterways which encompass the present city of Auckland, as well as overland to Hokianga and Whangaroa, preaching in the numerous villages the simple truth of the one living and true GOD. After one of his journeys he writes: "I had now been twenty days from the ship, during which time I had slept in my clothes, generally in the open air or in a boat or canoe.
He was not in favour of the Methodists sending a mission of their own to New Zealand, but when in 1822 his friend Mr. Leigh determined to settle in the country, Marsden put no obstacles in his way. Not only so, but in 1823 Marsden himself brought over Leigh's colleagues, Hobbs and Turner, who established their station at Whangaroa, after consultation with the settlers at the Bay of Islands.
With Kendall, Hall, and King, the three friendly chiefs, and some "assigned" convict servants, he reached New Zealand in December, 1814. With characteristic courage he landed at Whangaroa, among the tribe who had massacred the crew of the unhappy Boyd.
White, a Wesleyan missionary who lived at Whangaroa from 1823 to 1827, and to whom the natives are said to have admitted this. But that must have been, at least, fourteen years after the massacre, and George was by that time at odds with many of his own people. He died in 1825. His last hours were disturbed by remorse arising from an incident in the Boyd affair.
Learning, teaching, and translating occupied the brotherhood at Paihia, while Davis was farming at Kerikeri or Waimate, and the Wesleyans were founding a station further north at Whangaroa. Outside these quiet spots there was still turmoil and bloodshed. The year 1827 was a particularly stormy period. Hongi raided Whangaroa and there received a dangerous wound.
The ship Boyd, which had sailed from Sydney not many months previously, had been surprised by the Maoris in the harbour of Whangaroa, and with four exceptions all its white crew, to the number of about 70 persons, had been killed and cooked and eaten.
They had formerly belonged to the same mission at Whangaroa, when a war which took place amongst the natives totally destroyed their establishment; and, after enduring great varieties of suffering, they escaped, but lost everything they possessed, except the clothes they had on.
Cape Kara-Kara is a name to us and nothing more. Whangaroa Heads, that guard the harbour of that name, with its settlements and saw-mills, is but little better, though some few, who have been industriously reading up, remember Whangaroa as the scene of the ghastly massacre of the crew of the Boyd, half a century ago.
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