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Updated: July 16, 2025
It is found in the Mission Record in Father Baker's handwriting: "A Catholic one evening, on his way to the mission, stopped in a grog-shop and took a glass with the proprietor. 'Won't you go with me to hear the Fathers? said the guest. 'No, said the other, 'these men are too hard on us. They want all of us liquor-dealers to shut up our shops.
Unfortunately, to the ordinary sailor-man, the place presented no other forms of amusement besides drinking, and I was grieved to see almost the whole crowd, including the Kanakas, emerge from the grog-shop plentifully supplied with bottles, and, seating themselves on the beach, commence their carouse.
He now beheld, as he imagined, one of the losers of the lost ones, and felt stricken. "Well now," said Giles to Mrs Frog, "let's hear how you get along. What does your husband do?" "He mostly does nothin' but drink. Sometimes he sells little birds; sometimes he sells penny watches or boot-laces in Cheapside, an' turns in a little that way, but it all goes to the grog-shop; none of it comes here.
Since that time, Bradly will tell you that luck has been against him. He has been going down, down, down, every year, and now does scarcely anything but lounge about Harry Arnold's grog-shop and drink, while his poor wife and children are in want and suffering, and have a most wretched look, as you may see by this picture on the pledge.
Being forewarned of this before I went to sea, I took no ``long togs'' with me; and being dressed like the rest, in white duck trousers, blue jacket, and straw hat, which would prevent my going into better company, and showing no disposition to avoid them, I set all suspicion at rest. Our crew fell in with some who belonged to the other vessels, and, sailor-like, steered for the first grog-shop.
"Never mind; but put on your sky-scraper, and come down with me to the grog-shop wot I frequents, and I'll tell ye." "I'll do nothing of the sort; be off," cried the captain, preparing to slam the door. "Oh! it's all the same to me, in coorse, but I rather think if ye know'd that it's 'bout the Termagant, and that 'ere whale wot but it don't matter. Good-mornin'."
'On the road where I stood was a small bush grog-shop, and the coaches pulled up here to refresh the ever-thirsty bush traveller. At this spot the up-country and down-country coaches met, and I resolved that I would get into whichever came in first, leaving it to destiny to settle.
At first the coper seemed to have the best of it, but afterwards the breeze freshened and the Sunbeam soon left it far astern. Seeing that the race was lost, the floating grog-shop changed her course. "Ah, she'll steer for other fleets where there's no opposition," remarked the skipper. "To win our first race is a good omen," said John Binning, with much satisfaction.
For it was there that the kauri timber grew; it was there that the pigs were most plentiful and the cargoes of flax most easily obtained; and when a man named Turner set up a grog-shop on the shores of the bay all the whaling ships made this their usual place for resting and refitting.
Those poor fellows whose corpses we have lowered overboard, I daresay, thought that they were doing no great harm when they ran off to the grog-shop. They knew, of course, that they were disobeying the orders of Mr Manners, the midshipman in command of the boat; but they said to themselves, `Oh, he is only a midshipman, no harm can come of it.
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