Rhys Richards bibliography entry
Rhys Richards and the Bayley research trail
Rhys Richards’s Captain Charles Bayley: Whaling Master 1813–1875 (2014) is preserved in the Whale Song bibliography. Its subject connects with several library records about Bayley, the Wallaby and the wider nineteenth-century whale fishery.
The historical value of a named biography is its potential to connect scattered voyage and career records. But a bibliography listing is not enough to establish a precise date, cargo, catch or anchorage. Those details must be taken from checked pages or from the primary documents cited there.
The Bayley entries should therefore remain connected while separating documented Kāpiti events from the wider career of a whaling master. The complete book may require permission or access before extensive extracts can be used.
Captain Charles Bayley: Whaling Master 1813–1875 (2014) is listed in the original Whale Song bibliography.
The economic geography of whaling
Rhys Richards’s work on whaling and maritime history helps place Cook Strait’s station records within the larger Pacific economy. The local figures—oil, whalebone, provisions and vessels—become more meaningful when compared with the wider networks that bought, transported and consumed those products.