Wakefield describes whaling boats and island stations
A report of E. J. Wakefield’s expedition describes Evans’s whaling party on the island now known as Tokomapuna, Captain Lewis’s party on Motungarara and Mayhew’s establishment on Tahoramaurea. It records six whaleboats associated with Evans and four with Lewis, and describes sheltered anchorage and the difficult Waikanae river entrance. These are observations reported in 1840, with colonial-era place-name spellings.
The whaleboat as transport and industry
Edward Jerningham Wakefield's published account of Cook Strait drew heavily on his time among the Kāpiti whalers. His descriptions belong to a maritime world in which the same small open boats could be used for pursuing whales, ferrying passengers and moving between exposed landings. The whaleboat was therefore part of the district's transport system, not merely a hunting tool.
The 1839 return cited by Nigel Prickett counts 23 boats across six stations. That is a measure of the scale of small-boat activity concentrated around Kāpiti at the time. The return gives 466 tuns of black oil, excluding the separate oil of tonguers; it should not be read as a census of every station ever occupied.
Source: Nigel Prickett, The Archaeology of New Zealand Shore Whaling (Department of Conservation, 2002), pp. 83–84. See the full report in the Reports bookshelf.
Wakefield’s boats and stations
Edward Jerningham Wakefield’s accounts are among the contemporary sources for the changing shore-whaling industry. His published figures describe two stations and seven boats in 1844, and two stations with three boats producing 29 tuns of oil in 1847, as collated by Prickett (2002).
Different years, different totals
The six-station, 23-boat return for 1839 belongs to another reporting year. None of these snapshots should be presented as the total number of archaeological sites.
Explore connected books
Explore connected history
- Six stations, twenty-three boats and the whaling boom
- A visitor describes the three small islands and their whaling crews
- A historical map preserves the locations of vanished stations
- Kāpiti stations, work and processing
- Six stations on Whale Song map
- Puketapu ki Paraparaumu — History and Living Connections
- The archaeology of New Zealand shore whaling
- Waikanae: Report on Te Ātiawa/Ngāti Awa Claims
- He Rangatira nō Ngāti Toa Rangatira
- Kāpiti — Blood, Oil and Bone
- Eleven ships off Kāpiti in 1837