Wallaby 1842 right-whale catch
Charles Bayley and Wallaby
Captain Charles Bayley’s career belongs to the mobile whaling world linking Kāpiti and the southern ports. The vessel Wallaby appears in the collection’s accounts of Kāpiti in 1842, including its movement between whaling grounds and ports.
The documentary trail is developed in Rhys Richards’s Captain Charles Bayley: Whaling Master 1813–1875 (2014), alongside Whale Song’s records of Wallaby. Vessel movements, crew changes and catches belong to the same maritime story, but should be read from the dated entries rather than treated as one undifferentiated voyage.
Sources: Rhys Richards, Captain Charles Bayley: Whaling Master 1813–1875 (2014); existing WhaleLIBRARY Bayley and Wallaby records.
Richards reports twelve right whales taken in five months in New Zealand waters, producing 50 tuns of right-whale oil and some baleen.
A right whale in the 1842 record
The Wallaby catch entry concerns a reported right whale in 1842. Southern right whales approached coastal waters where crews could launch small boats from shore or work from visiting vessels. The species’ accessibility was central to the industry and ultimately to its depletion.
Catch records and ecological change
An individual catch is one piece of evidence. Regional returns show six Kāpiti–Mana establishments and 23 boats in 1839, with much smaller operations reported by 1847. These returns help place Wallaby’s 1842 episode within a changing industry without converting one catch into a population estimate.
Explore connected books
Explore connected history
- Charles Bayley and Wallaby at Kāpiti in 1842
- Charles Bayley and the Wallaby at Kāpiti
- Wallaby crew absconded at Kāpiti
- Wallaby travelled between Kāpiti and southern ports
- Wallaby voyage production and trade
- Did shore whaling rapidly reduce southern right whale numbers?
- southern right whale depletion study
Follow this history into other books
Continue with these connected accounts. Each opens a separate book with its own evidence and perspective.