A Great White shark jaw hangs on the wall in the ship wing at the Russell Museum. It comes from a shark caught near the Whangamumu whaling station in the 1927-8 season. The fish was cruising just off shore hoping for some tasty titbits sluiced from the slipway. Some of the station hands pushed off to interview him and he was harpooned. He measured 20 feet 9 inches and weighed half a ton according to Captain Bert Cook, head of the Whangamumu whaling operation, who gifted the jaw to the museum.

As well Cook descendants have gifted whalebones, harpoons, lip knives, a blubber spade and whaleboat rowlocks to the museum.

This specimen is still one of the largest caught in New Zealand waters.

The photo shows Mr Munro, Russell’s baker in the 1920s, posing with the shark jaw hung up to dry in the garden of Cook’s Pacific Hotel (Hananui).

This Ether mask is made of brass with decorative engraving and a nose covering of soft padded leather. Inside the round mesh covered part is a piece of sponge that held the ether when it was dropped through the funnel above. The round hole by the butterfly nut was covered and uncovered by thumb or finger to regulate the inhaling of air.

Chloroform was discovered in 1831 and first used in 1847. Queen Victoria was given it for the births of her younger children in the 1850s.

This mask belonged to Samuel Hayward Ford, New Zealand ‘s first resident surgeon who lived in Paihia, Te Wahapu and later Russell from 1837 until his death in 1876. He was highly thought of and obviously kept up to date with medical advances. However despite his skill only one of his large family survived childhood illnesses. Samuel, Martha, his wife, and some of their children are buried in Christ Church graveyard.

Russell Museum also holds Samuel’s brass plate used to advertise his surgery.

Patu or mere were made in stone, greenstone or as in this case whalebone. This one was possibly made by William Cook, an English sailor who came ashore and married Tiraha, a relative of the chiefs Tamati Waka Nene and Patuone. Their children and grand children were involved in deep sea and shore based whaling. The family represents one of the many bicultural families common in the Bay from the early 19th century.

A family reunion was held at Labour Weekend 2006 at Waikare Marae at which over 200 descendants were present.

These Staffordshire china dogs are bold and colourful, even if they look crudely finished. They belonged to Benjamin Wood, originally from Ireland who arrived in the Bay of Islands with his family on the Westminster 17 March 1840 to be Chief Constable. He had 6 policemen and members of the 99th Regiment to help him establish law and order.

After the evacuation of the town in 1845 he went to Auckland but returned the following year staying until 1853. He moved back to Auckland to be court bailiff until his retirement in 1860. He died in 1870 and was buried in Symonds Street cemetery. As part of the Police centenary celebrations his grave stone was restored and a plaque unveiled to honour this country’s first policeman. The ceremony ended with the piping of an Irish jig.

There is a family story that the dogs were presented to Benjamin by Governor Hobson. China dogs were produced in Staffordshire mainly between 1820-50. They were often in pairs with a flat side, so they went each end of the mantelshelf. Spaniels, like our pair were common, but hunting dogs like greyhound, pointers and setters were also popular. Our dogs stand on a pink cushion base decorated with green leaves. Their coats are curly and they gaze out with rather a vacant stare. A great-great-grandson brought them to the museum as he felt this is where Benjamin first did his policing in New Zealand. Sadly the family do not have a photo of him.

Benjamin would no doubt have used truncheon and a bull’s eye lantern for night patrol – the Museum has examples on display. At the Russell Police Station just inside the front gate a plaque to remember the beginning of policing in New Zealand was placed in 1990.

Benjamin’s dogs have pride of place among our china collection.

 

Not all the treasures in the Russell Museum are historic. This beautiful rain cape was made in 2000 by Nikki Lawrence, a Far North weaver. It is a metre wide, .75 metre deep with plaited ties and made of Raupo (bullrush).

Rain capes were one of the earliest types of cape, made for protection from the elements. They are relatively quick to produce as contrasted with fine korowai cloaks. Usually made of Harakeke, Ti or Kiekie, they were weather proof and durable.

 

Russell Lights - Vol 10 Issue 15 - July 2007

Samuel Stephenson merchant trader of Russell imported an iron crane from England to unload coastal shipping at his premises just north of the present Russell Police Station. It was mounted on a small jetty that had wooden rails and wagons leading into his warehouse.

In 1880 it was purchased by the Government and put on a new wharf on the present site at the end of Cass Street and used to unload larger shipping.

Later in the 1920s a piece was welded into it so it could be used to haul up gamefish for weighing. You can still see the joins of the splice today.

It was replaced by a new crane in 1972, and the old crane went to Whangarei. It was the enquiries of Marie King, Russell Museum’s Curator, who finally located it in a Northland Harbour Board shed. It was sandblasted and returned in 1984, erected by Graham Townsend and painted by Jim Yearbury.

Just recently it has had a major restoration and repaint by Bruce Howell and continues to look to sea watching visiting vessels of all sizes as it has for 140 years.

Russell Lights - Vol 10 Issue 13 - June 2007

This pewter tankard is believed to have been found in the ashes of the Duke of Marlborough hotel. It’s not sure if it was the first Duke that was burnt and looted in 1845, or the second burnt in the 1870s. The tankard has a glass bottom, cracked in the fire.

The glass bottomed tankard seems to have come into being in the later half of the 18th century when it was advisable to keep a watchful eye on one’s drinking companions who might be pickpocketers, footpads or the approaching press gang. A recruiting sergeant might creep up unseen, and drop a shilling in the tankard. When the tankard was emptied the unfortunate drinker was deemed to have taken the Kings shilling. That is, he had enlisted.

In old Kororareka new crew for visiting whaling ships were always needed to replace those that had died from sickness, injuries or drowning, or men who had deserted ship. Hence the glass bottomed tankard still had a place to avoid forced recruitment to serve on one of the less popular types of visiting shipping.

And what did the whalers drink? Our early newspaper The NZ Advertiser and Bay of Islands Gazette carries advertisements from local merchants listing imports predominantly of rum, gin and port.

 

Russell Lights - Vol 10 Issue 11 - May 2007

Russell was a port of call for visiting whalers for over a hundred years. Russell Museum has a collection of whaling related items – harpoons, whalebones, a record of ships visits in the 1870s.

Whalers had a lot of spare hours at sea and turned their hands to hobbies to fill the time. They used whatever was at hand and made items they could use or to take home as gifts to family.

These examples are a ladle for a water cask made with half a carved coconut shell with a whalebone handle and a whalebone pipe rack. The small knife has a whalebone handle and the blade edged implement is a seam rubber to flatten newly sewn seams. The final two items are fids – used in splicing rope.

We don’t have a whalebone corset stiffener which whalers often made for a sweet heart back home. At least one whaler wrote a love poem on part of a corset:

Accept, dear girl, this busk from me;

            Carved by my humble hand.

I took it from a Sparm Whale’s Jaw,

            One thousand miles from land!
In many a gale,

Has been the Whale,

            In which this bone did rest,
His time is past,

His bone at last

            Must now support thy brest [sic]

 

This poem came from a busk in the collection of W.W. Bennett, cited in The Yankee Whaler by Clifford W. Ashley. The same book describes a busk as “a flat fence-paling-like ‘stay’ about two inches wide, which in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was thrust into an open slit at the front of the corset. Any woman so fortified was bound to remain true to her sailor.”

 

Russell Lights - Vol 10 Issue 9 - May 2007

This doll is dressed in the uniform of a New Zealand soldier, South African War 1899 – 1902.

Such dolls are very collectible as they were home-made. The New Zealand Army Museum at Waiouru, when they visited a few years ago, claimed they didn’t have one.

New Zealand volunteers to this war totalled 6495 men and 8000 horses. 228 men died – 70 in action, 133 from disease and 25 in accidents. Three young men went from Russell:

• Private Ludovic Colquhoun who later served in WWI
• Private Henry Tapua Athelston Stephenson
• Private Alfred George Bernard Williams.

Two came home but Henry stayed on in South Africa as a telegraphist and died of enteric fever in 1903.