Kāpiti — Blood, Oil and Bone
The Whale Song publication Kāpiti — Blood, Oil and Bone was first issued in December 2025 and reprinted in March 2026. It assembles historical newspaper material, maritime records and accounts of Kāpiti's shore-whaling economy.
The historical record
Kāpiti — Blood, Oil and Bone — Whale Song Trust — 2025
Documents behind the history
Its documentary examples include the eleven ships recorded off Kāpiti during August–October 1837 and Alexander Fraser's 1840 station expenditure on food and trade goods. These named records help connect the broad story of whaling to particular people, voyages and transactions.
Source: Whale Song, Kāpiti — Blood, Oil and Bone (2025), pp. 11, 16.
Reading the vessels and the stations together
The eleven ships recorded off Kāpiti between 25 August and 12 October 1837 in Whale Song's Kāpiti – Blood, Oil and Bone demonstrate the scale of the offshore maritime traffic before the 1839 shore-station statistics. A vessel sighting is not the same as proof that its crew landed at a particular station, but the register helps establish how crowded the roadstead could become.
By 1839, Dieffenbach's figures, as reported by Prickett, describe six Kāpiti–Mana shore stations operating 23 boats. These are complementary records of maritime and shore-based activity from different years; they should not be merged into one fleet total.
The combination of vessel lists, station accounts and archaeological remains gives readers three perspectives: ships approaching the coast, people and goods moving through the stations, and the physical evidence left on the land.
Sources: Nigel Prickett, The Archaeology of New Zealand Shore Whaling (2002), Kāpiti chapter, pp. 83–97 (especially Paremata, Tahoramaurea and Te Kahuoterangi); where specified, Whale Song, Kāpiti – Blood, Oil and Bone (2025). Interpretations and source limitations are distinguished in the text.
A maritime crossroads
Kāpiti was a place of exchange long before commercial shore whaling. In the nineteenth century, whaling crews, Māori communities, visiting ships and trading networks met along the coast and across Cook Strait. The story is therefore about relationships, work, food, goods and movement as much as whale catches.
The evidence behind the narrative
The Whale Song publication records eleven named vessels off Kāpiti between 25 August and 12 October 1837 (p.16). Its account of Alexander Fraser’s 1840 trading figures includes £394 for pork and £436 for flour (p.11). These records reveal a supply economy extending far beyond oil and whalebone.
Explore connected books
Explore connected history
- Whale Song, Kāpiti — Blood, Oil and Bone (2025)
- A correspondent counts boats and oil at Kāpiti and Mana
- What whale oil and baleen were used for
- Eleven ships off Kāpiti in 1837
- Alexander Fraser 1840 station accounts
- 1839 Kāpiti–Mana station grouping
- Te Ātiawa ki Kāpiti iwi history
- An Old New Zealander — T. Lindsay Buick (1911)
Illustrative material from the research image collection
