Jillett’s Whaling Station, Kāpiti Island
The widely reproduced view of Gillett’s whaling station is associated with an 1844 sketch. The version printed in T. Lindsay Buick’s An Old New Zealander (1911) was a watercolour copy made in 1907. The dates identify stages in the picture’s transmission, not three separate observations of the station.
The historical record
Jillett’s Whaling Station, Kāpiti Island
Jillett’s Whaling Station, Kāpiti Island
Jillett’s Whaling Station, Kāpiti Island
A scene copied, not photographed
What the image can and cannot show
The illustration offers a visual point of entry to the station landscape, but it does not by itself prove the number of workers, the full extent of the buildings or the output in a given year. Archaeological records and contemporary station returns provide different kinds of evidence. See Buick (1911) and Prickett (2002), Kāpiti chapter.
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Illustrative material from the research image collection
