Banking Under Difficulties/Chapter 23
CHAPTER XXIII.
The first building erected by the Bank of New South Wales at Hokitika was a corrugated iron one, 12 x 20, divided into bank office, 12 x 12, and sleeping apartment, 12 x 8. In the smaller room four of us slept on the floor, on a bed of straw. Our meals we took at an eating-house close by, for which we paid 50s. per week each. This building did duty until the rush fairly set in, when a more commodious bank chamber was erected, with manager’s residence at the rear. The front of this building had three French windows in it, facing and abutting the pathway. One night when I was away from home, a horse camped in front of one of the windows and backed into the bedroom, nearly frightening the life out of my wife. Mrs. Preshaw was one of the first ladies on the West Coast, and for a long time had to do all her own work, no servants being obtainable. After some months we succeeded in getting one, £1 a-week being the wages paid, which was equivalent to £2, inasmuch as living was so dear; flour, 1s. 4d. per lb.; meat, from 1s. to 2s. 6d.; milk, 4s. per quart; washing, 12s. per dozen; and other things in proportion. Vegetables were not to be had at any price, an occasional carrot from a bag of horse carrots, and dried peas, were all we could get. The horses were fed out of nose-bags, my little nag (Nobby) like his master, was a capital fossicker; his own feed finished, and nose-bag taken off, he would make for the nearest horse, quietly take off his nose-bag and feed away; he would kick out right and left; no getting near him till the feed was finished. Oftentimes, when horse feed was scarce, I have seen horses eating sugar bags and post-and-rail fences.
As an instance of the discomforts of the early days, and the servant-girl nuisance, a friend of mine, Mr. B., a well-known magistrate, was appointed warden, &c., of a certain goldfield, and proceeded to the field of his future labours, leaving his wife and family behind until he could secure some place for them to live in. He was successful so far, and wrote to Mrs. B. to join him. The weather was extremely wet. On Mr. B.’s return from visiting some outlying district, the rain was descending in torrents, and on entering the house he found Mrs. B. and her children in bed, Mrs. B. with an umbrella over her head, and a tea tray on her lap, as being the best or about the only way to keep herself and the children from being drenched. Matters improved, however, after a time; a better habitation was erected, and a servant obtained; the latter was another trouble. One evening Mrs. B. entered the kitchen and found the servant sitting on the knee of the sergeant of police; making some remark, she walked out. Next morning the servant gave her notice to leave, and on being asked the reason, replied, “Well, ma’am, I think you were very rude to the sergeant last night.”
We had been without the sight of a beef-steak or a chop for a month, when late one morning a steamer was seen coming towards the dreaded bar. Soon she was made out as the William Misken, a small screw boat, owned by two friends of mine, now resident in Sydney. All the town went to see the Misken cross the bar, or pile up on the beach, for at that time there were twenty-nine steamers and sailing vessels piled up at the entrance of the river; some on top of others. On she came fairly well, until the cry went up 100 to 10 she goes ashore, and the odds went on to 100 to 5, amidst great excitement, without finding takers. But at this critical moment, just as she was struck by a heavy roller, and her fate seemed sealed, she shook herself free, and answering her helm like a yacht, steamed over the last danger, and into the river to the joy of all. It was seen that she had some sheep and cattle on board. We anxiously looked forward to a a “good square meal,” all hands being pretty well tired of bacon and sardines. Upon reaching the wharf a rush was made on board, and the owner was asked what he would take for his live stock. He knew how to open his mouth, for he had seen goldfield rushes before; sold his fat bullocks at £75 a-head, and sheep at £5 each, cash down before delivery, and the removal at the risk and cost of the buyer. In another hour a crowd was to be seen about the butcher’s shop, waiting in turn to secure beef at 2s. 6d. per lb. The steamboat owner did well, for he informed me he had purchased the cattle at £18 per head, and the sheep at 18s. each forty-eight hours before, in Nelson, and placed them on his already over-freighted ship-deck “for better for worse.”
We had a novelty about this time—a vessel coming over the bar bottom up. A report came one tide time that a ship was sailing in bottom up. It is needless to say the informer was an “Italian.” We, of course, rushed to see the sight, and to render assistance, when, sure enough, there was a vessel bottom up, and her crew in the rollers trying to make for the shore. They had each secured some floating object, and got safely over the break, but kept drifting with the current along the shore, and it was a considerable time before we could manage to get a line thrown far enough to reach them; at last we had the satisfaction of landing them all on the beach, their craft, capsized with the strong wind and heavy rollers, eventually landing on the shore with her deck downward, and her keel in the air.
Hokitika being a bar harbour, only vessels of light draught could enter the river. The ocean steamers were tendered by small steamers; the Favourite and the Bruce were two of the principal ones. The charge for conveying passengers from the roadstead to the wharf, a distance of three miles, was £1 a head; £4 a ton for goods.
Allotments were marked off on the sea beach, a safe distance above high-water mark, averaging from 30ft. frontage by a depth of 60ft. These sold readily from £20 to £100 an allotment; and if anything of a decent building thereon, from £200 to £500. £3 10s. per cwt, was the charge for packing goods from Hokitika to Waimea, a distance of fifteen miles.
The shipping losses in 1865—i.e., value of ships and goods damaged and destroyed—must have been hundreds of thousands of pounds. One of the first wrecks was the Montezuma, followed by the Oak, Sir Francis Drake, Titania, and others, In many cases the vessels did not become total wrecks, being thrown high up on the beach. They were then raised on screw-jacks, and placed on ways. The distance between the sea and the river, which here ran parallel to the beach, was about fifty yards, so that after being elevated to the highest point on the spit they readily ran down the greased incline. One of the leading auctioneers (R. Reeves) did an immense business selling cargoes, and oftentimes the vessels themselves. To give an idea of his business, his advertisements in the local paper, the West Coast Times, came to £250 a month.
One of the most exciting days in shipping circles was the 6th October, 1865. No fewer than thirteen vessels sailed over the bar, and all but one got in safely. The Maria was the unfortunate one. She was loaded up for Cassius and Comisky, Cassius was on the beach in a most excited state.
On one occasion a steamer was unable to land her passengers for ten days. In the offing was to be seen the Claud Hamilton, from Dunedin and Christchurch, with a large crowd of passengers, and light freight. There she had been to the discomfort of her people, pitching and rolling, and awaiting the chance of a small steamer tendering her; but though she steamed into the roadstead every tide, and fired guns and hoisted signals, no one went to her assistance, until my friend in the Misken, for the small consideration of £500, agreed to go out next tide and tranship in boats to his own craft, those ill-fated ladies, children, and diggers who were so eager to get ashore and turn their valuable time to a more profitable account; and in six hours my friend, for his pluck, was £500 a better man. On ——— the steamer Lioness got ashore, and being a gold mine to her owners, they spent a thousand pounds at least in lifting her upon wooden blocks of timber ready to launch. During the night a flood came down the river, and opened out a new channel under the steamer’s keel. She sank down and gradually turned her paddle boxes in the sand, and at daylight was found keel up. Her fate was now considered sealed. All the clever folk railed at the owners for not cutting open her side and saving the machinery, but they replied (like the Yankee who was stuck up—“Your money or your brains.” “Blow away, mate, I guess you might as well go to New York without brains as without money”), “What is the use of old machinery and no hull?” Next morning they had the satisfaction of seeing the Lioness returned to her proper position—upright—from which she shortly afterwards was launched into her native element.
Yates (whose name is mentioned in Chapter 10) arrived on the Coast in July 1865, per s.s. Titania, which vessel was wrecked in crossing the bar, and sold next day for the benefit of the owners for £125. I was just on the eve of starting for the Grey River with Walmsley, news from that place of extraordinary deposits of gold having been discovered, being received. Yates accompanied us, and we found on our arrival such a scene of excitement as I have rarely witnessed. The few miners returning for supplies reported the new diggings to be the richest ever opened in New Zealand. The following entry appears in my diary:—“Twelve new gullies all now in course of being worked, the yields from some of which are remarkably good. The diggings are all on the Nelson side of the Grey, but as the Government of that province have no one to represent them on the ground, the port township is likely to be formed on the Canterbury side of the river, which is in every respect the better, having deep water, &c.; fine block of land; country suitable for the formation of a township. Have secured a site, and shipped timber and iron for an office from Hokitika. The miners are leaving the Hokitika district in hundreds, and before many weeks are past I expect the Grey township will be the most important on the West Coast. The bar entrance, although narrow, is in a line with the river, and is reported not likely to be such an obstruction to navigation as the Hokitika.”
Sweeney (referred to under date 10th November, 1864) did remarkably well at carting and packing. This he gave up after a time and took to storekeeping, at which he made money. Soon after the Totara rush broke out he started a branch store on the river bank, half-a-mile from its mouth, which was conducted by my old Kiandra friend, Maxwell, or “Daddy,” as he was generally known. On one of my trips from the Totara I called in to see him. I had made an early start, and found the store closed. However, I pulled the tent door aside, and found my noble “Daddy” stretched at full length in front of the counter, wrapped up in his blankets and his head in a bag. I roused him up; he informed me the bag acted in place of a mosquito net. I pointed to some flour in regular tracks, and asking the meaning of it, he said it was to keep the rats from the flour bags and his head. “Daddy,” in course of time, went into business on his own account, made money, and is now in an independent position. Sweeney was a genial, good-natured sort of fellow; in fact his good nature was the ruin of him, inasmuch as he always had a lot of “hangers on” at the store; men whom he had known at different times and at different places, and who imposed on him. On one occasion I said to him, “Why are these fellows, who are as well able to work as you are, loafing about you?” He laughed and said, “What’s the odds, it’s only a feed; I don’t miss it; may be hard up myself some day.” Many a pound he gave away, to men who were too lazy to work. Poor fellow, he has joined the great majority; he died in Auckland in 1875 of consumption, leaving a wife and family totally unprovided for.
The following extract is from a West Coast paper. Many a meal I have had in the kitchen referred to. Blake had a good help-mate in his wife, coined money in the “good old times,” and is now living on his means:—
“A short, thick-set, muscular man, strong of will and resolute of purpose, with a weakness for Nelson ale and massive greenstone pendants to his watch-chain, was Blake. A man who was more at home on a vessel’s deck than behind a counter, and could handle a steer-oar better than a steel pen. In short, like that redoubtable old king, ‘whose mark for Rex was a single x, and whose drink was ditto, double,’ Blake ‘scorned the fetters of four and twenty letters,’ and it saved him a vast deal of trouble. Yet a shrewd character was Isaac Blake. The first time we visited the town that bore his name we crowded into the kitchen of his little slab store and regaled ourselves on a half-crown’s worth of ship biscuit and butter, prefaced by a thin rasher of bacon and a couple of high-coloured malodorous eggs, the whole dignified by the name of dinner, and being somewhat pushed for room, we remarked upon the fact, and suggested that our host should get more commodious premises. ‘Aye, aye,’ was the response, ‘if the Coast goes ahead, I’ll get some congregated iron from Nelson.’ No orthœpist but an able dealer, he did not believe in parting with his goods unless he received full value in return. A poet of the period, who had possibly been refused drinks on account, thus gave vent to his spleen:—
‘Old Blake is the mercantile lion
The king of the beasts of the port
Your putting-through tricks you may try on,
But he’s not the one to be caught.
“But though an unlettered man, naturally rough, and not made any smoother by years of hard buffeting with men as rude as himself, Blake still possessed a little of the poetry of childhood. The love of the beautiful that is implanted in all youthful breasts was not altogether dead within his, and when the above lines were warbled to him by a half intoxicated customer, he shouted for all hands, and vowed that that pioneer, the writer of ‘that ere song,’ should never want a fifty of flour while he remained on the Coast.”
Another characteristic anecdote, showing the man’s firmness and sensibility, and we let Blake alone. He received a business letter, and I read it for him. It merely contained invoices of goods, and solicited further patronage. “What’s on the envelope?” said Blake. “Your name and address,” I answered. “What’s that behind the name?” “Esquire,” I replied. “Well, I’m d———," said the merchant, “I’ve laid out money—cash down—hundreds of pounds—with that firm, and now they take a rise out of a man by calling him Esquire.” “Not another penny will they see of my money,” he added with an oath, and he kept his word.
“Lives of great men all remind us
We may make our lives sublime;
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.”
Blaketown had its day, and its glory departed. “How’s trade?” I asked one morning, shortly after Greymouth was a township. “There aint bin a fight this week,” was the answer. It was brief, and to the uninitiated ambiguous, but to me it told a sad tale of ruin and decay.
