Captain Cook’s death at the hands of the Hawaiians shocked the world. Tales of ferocious warriors, cannibalism, human sacrifices and continual warring between the islanders of the South Pacific spread rapidly through Europe in the late eighteenth century. As stirring reports of William Carey’s evangelical work in Bengal began to reach England, Presbyterians, Anglicans (Calvanistic Methodists) and Congregationalists were aroused to form their own Missionary Society for non-Baptists.
London Missionary Society (LMS)
As a result, in 1795 the London Missionary Society was established to introduce through the work of ‘Evangelical Ministers & Lay brethren of all Denominations the Gospel and its ordinances to Heathen & Other Unenlightened countries’.
It was also becoming known about that time that adventurers and some members of the large whaling and scaling fleets were exploiting native peoples, especially their women. Pirates roamed the oceans and privateer vessels sought to manipulate the less worldly at every opportunity.
It was against this backdrop that Rowland Hassall, a weaver who worked with Indian silk in the English town of Coventry, became an evangelist with the London Missionary Society
Rowland had been open to any suggestion that he serve God in some way since he almost died of cholera and came close to being nailed into his coffin. He apparently sat up in his coffin and vowed to serve God in some way in thanks for his close call!
Having purchased for £5000 a small 267-ton sailing ship – the Duff – in August 1796, the Society sponsored its first missionary voyage to leave England for a foreign country. With Captain Wilson in charge and a crew of about 50 sailors, 30 missionaries set sail for Tahiti (then called Otaheite as the natives added an O to proper names). Most of these were known as artisan missionaries: the only ordained clergymen being James Fleet Cover, a close friend of the Hassall’s, John Eyre, John Jefferson and Thomas Lewis.
The Missionaries
As a pioneer group mostly chosen from volunteers who offered their services to set up the mission, they were selected for their secular skills as much as their desire to work among the natives. The group included William Henry, who would later be designated Reverend in a Tahitian church: Francis Oakes, a shoemaker; Samuel Clode, who had some medical training and several carpenters. The rest were trained in suitable skills before leaving England.
Records suggest that Rowland was trained in carpentry, but – perhaps on realising there were already five qualified carpenters on board the Duff – he became a blacksmith in Tahiti. The missionaries’ own journals (as published in ‘A Missionary Voyage’) say the smithery was built with the help of 10 natives supplied by King Pomare and describes the interest created by its operation:
“The shop being finished, and brother Hodges with Hassall at work, the natives crowded round him, but vastly frightened with the sparks and hissing of the iron in water Pomare came, surpremely delighted with the bellows and forge, and catching the blacksmith in his arms, all dirty as he was, joined noses with him, and expressed his high satisfaction. After work they were going to bathe themselves in the river when the young king laid hold of an arm of each and went down with them to bathe. His queen, Tetua, followed, and said to Hassall, “Harre no t’avye, Go into the water”, but they signified they wished she would leave them first: on this she retired: as for herself, she often bathes at noon-day attended by twenty men, seldom ever having any women to wait on her.”
Many of the missionaries on that first voyage were single, although some felt called to take their families and settle among the natives. One of these was Rowland Hassall, who, with his wife Elizabeth, Thomas (who was two years old at the time) and baby Samuel Otoo, looked to a new and rewarding life in the Lord’s service. They never intended to travel to the colony of New South Wales; in fact, they scarcely knew at the time where Port Jackson was – only that it was a penal colony and a place to be feared, somewhere on the far side of the world. They were going to be missionaries in Tahiti.
Voyage of the Duff
The Duff was dressed ready for sail on 10 August 1796. Looking splendid in the autumn sunshine, the Mission Flag of the ‘Four Silver Doves’ flew proudly from the mainmast as all hands loaded cargo for the long voyage. On the wharf a small group of well-wishers, friends and relatives watched anxiously as the passengers waved goodbye before they sailed far away, to an almost unknown land.
The ship began to move down the River Thames toward the open sea, past the white cliffs of Dover. Most must have feared they would never see them again in this life.
The Duff waited just off the coast until it was possible to begin the voyage proper – in convoy with 57 transports and Portuguese traders through the Channel, to avoid enemy French ships then on for South America alone. The Duff plied south then west toward the bottom of South America.
As they approached Cape Horn, the seas became more mountainous and the stormy winds beat them back. They struggled for days – cold, frightened and knocked about by the heaving seas – until Captain Wilson said they must turn back. If they continued west, they would fail; they must sail east and then south of Africa.
And so, their ship nearly around the bottom of South America, more than half way to Tahiti, the missionaries turned back. The Duff turned to the east and proceeded towards Tahiti, that way taking advantage of the prevailing westerly winds. They travelled all the way across the South Atlantic, around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa, across the Indian Ocean, well south of Australia and New Zealand, right across the Pacific.
They didn’t see land or any other ship for over three and a half months. Rowland often said that he felt rather cheated because, having sailed nearly right around the globe, all he had seen was water and a few whales!
When at last they sighted land, they had been at sea for almost seven months. Having spent so long together in prayer and teaching each other the rudiments of their secular abilities, they were by that time well prepared for their mission.
They must have been happy to be free of the constraints of living in the same limited company with no privacy in such cramped quarters.
But would the natives welcome or despise them? Would they be safe?
The Duff arrives in Matavai Bay, Tahiti
On the beautiful tropical morning of 5 March 1797, the Duff anchored in Matavai Bay on the north coast of Tahiti. The ship was to stay there with the party until all had settled down, then travel on to the neighbouring islands before setting out for England. William Shelley was to travel with the Tongan party and was put in charge of medicines, while just two missionaries were to go to the Marquesas. The Duff’s route was then to be via China in order to pickup a cargo of tea for the East India Company – not all the Lord’s work could be conducted through subscription, even in those days.
The missionaries were alarmed to see canoes heading for the ship shortly after their arrival (74 were counted in all, each loaded with about 20 people). The natives quickly surged on board the Duff – but in a most friendly way – full of cheerfulness and good nature, unarmed, even helping the sailors position their great guns without the slightest anxiety.
The Tahitians were puzzled by the missionaries’ refusal to buy fruit and chickens as passengers aboard all the other passing ships had done and by their unwillingness to approach the native women. It was the sabbath, so the missionaries refused to conduct trade that day.
The Rev James Cover had the honour of preaching the first sermon in Tahiti that day and the natives watched the strange ceremony with courtesy, but did not understand at all what they were seeing. The next day a number of the party went ashore and found the people to be extremely hospitable, so much so that a house called by the islanders Fare Beretane (British House), which had been prepared at Point Venus for the return of Captain Bligh, was freely given for the missionaries’ use.
Some days later the women and children went ashore and were surrounded by crowds of people the whole time. When they had gone inside the building, the natives kept calling to see the children, but they were gentle and full of laughter. Even the sacred young king, Tu (known as Otoo to the British) and his wife, riding around as they did on the shoulders of their servants, wanted to see and touch Samuel and Thomas.
Otoo received them with lavish hospitality and the other natives greeted them loaded with gifts, including fish, fruit, live pigs and poultry. The people brought them so much food that the missionaries had no way to use it all. Everywhere they looked there was abundance, joy and beauty. Native servants were provided to carry out the menial tasks of the mission and two Swedish deserters from ships that had called there in recent years acted as interpreters.
The forceful Captain of the Duff, James Wilson, who had been a Christian only a few years and still revealed much of his wild and adventurous sea-faring past, bargained with the leading chief of the Matavai Bay district for land. If Tahiti was to be favoured by the missionaries, he said, then the island’s rulers must offer some inducement for the missionaries to remain. As a result, a select block was given over to the mission for communal use. This is commemorated in the famous Cession of Matavai, the subject of numerous artworks over the years.
The Duff sailed on, dropping off missionaries at neighbouring islands before heading for China to collect tea for the East India Company – which rewarded the LMS to the tune of £4100 when it arrived safely back in London in July 1798. By that time, the missionary party had well and truly plunged into their religious duties. The Tahitians were quite happy to have Europeans among them, but they had no interest in the gospel. Rather, they saw the English as a source of muskets for tribal warfare and other material benefits.
A number of the party soon fell from grace by consorting with the natives (Francis Oakes was the first in November 1797). Opinions differed at the meeting called to discuss whether it would be right to take a native girl for a wife; most holding that God would not countenance a union of Christian and Pagan. On a formal vote, the majority decision found celibacy the preferred option as, in the absence of suitable Christian partners of any race, this was undoubtedly the will of the Lord.
Oakes stayed on at the mission, but later fled with Rowland Hassall and a number of others to Sydney, where he married a ‘currency lass’ from the colony. One of his sons, John Leigh Oakes, later married the daughter of William Shelley Jr and Rowland’s daughter Susannah Marsden Hassall, thereby bringing together formally three missionary families whose lives were bound by circumstance and friendship for more than 50 years. (See Chapter 10 for more details.)
The Tahitians made very few compromises for the British and in time came to resent the missionaries’ meddling in their customs and culture. Dancing, tattooing and girls wearing flowers in their hair to indicate sexual availability was frowned upon and, as they learned more of the local language, the missionaries became shocked to hear of babies being killed at birth, open immorality, human sacrifice, sorcery and a group of gay young men in the King’s household!
The brethren found it difficult to accept these pagans as being their equal while on the other hand the Tahitians could not understand why the foreigners living on their island accepted everything but were not prepared to share all they had.
Rowland and Elizabeth had intended to honour the young king Otoo by naming young Samuel after him before they left England, but discovered that by doing so they had gravely offended Tahitian culture. As the missionaries noted: “This name is so sacred here that every word into which Otoo enters is prohibited and may only be used in speaking of and to the king.” Thus, the first birthday of Samuel Otoo Hassall was an embarrassment to all concerned.
The Tahitians showed no signs of interest in the gospel throughout the first year, but constantly asked for firearms and tools. Agreeing among themselves that it would be very unwise to allow muskets into the hands of such a warlike people, the missionaries continued their trade only in less lethal items.
The Nautilus arrives in Tahiti
The fragile coexistence was broken by the visit of the Nautilus, which had been battered in a fierce storm while heading for the colony at New South Wales with a much-needed shipment of pork and was in urgent need of repairs.
The crew of the Nautilus, quite experienced through their usual business trading American furs in China, planned to exchange muskets for food and water in Tahiti; the missionaries tried instead to supply them secretly from their own limited stock of food in order to avoid the deadly trade. Pomare found them out and was furious, refusing to allow the missionaries to buy any more food.
The Nautilus left, but a week later returned in an even more unseaworthy state following extensive gale damage, and now without the supplies they had recently collected. Things became ugly quite suddenly, with many of the crew of the Nautilus deserting while King Pomare made preparations to attack the brethren.
A group of missionaries asked Pomare for the deserters to be sent back to the ship but were beaten up by a rabble and barely escaped with their lives. Stories abounded that the younger European women were in danger from the Tahitian men, while many said that every one of them would be killed. Rowland, as a blacksmith, was seen to be at great risk of capture by the natives because of his ability to produce weapons.
The Nautilus was right there in view, a rare chance, and the captain urged the missionaries to escape. A number of the group packed their belongings in haste and went on board, but others – Henry Nott, the Eyres and a few others – decided to stay on (Mrs Eyre was quite old and said she would rather risk death on dry land than face the misery of another sea voyage).
Rowland didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t believe that this was the end of their holy mission or that the people who had been so friendly and generous to them would now plot to kill them. Even if things were not good at Matavai, perhaps they could start again; there were, after all, other islands nearby.
Elizabeth agreed to stay on the island but, in the end, neither she nor Rowland had a choice and were told they must leave because the Tahitians would force Rowland to make weapons on the forge. One young man caused him much pain when he said that he couldn’t imagine how he could possibly have thought it right to take a wife and young children to a place like Tahiti in the first place.
The Nautilus arrives in Port Jackson
And so, almost a year to the day since their arrival and not really sure that they were doing the right thing, they gathered their possessions, the children Thomas, Samuel and the new baby Jonathan, some food that remained including a few live pigs, and rowed out into the darkness to the Nautilus.
They sailed at first light the next morning, not free to stay and face what might be a massacre, yet frightened about a voyage on the battered ship. Because so many of the crew had deserted, the missionaries had to act as sailors. They were desperately short of provisions, constantly manning the pumps, struggling with torn sails and being tossed in storms; at one point they almost ran aground on Pyramid Rock near Lord Howe Island.
With great difficulty they limped into Port Jackson on 14 May 1798; the vessel being so extremely leaky that it required the labour of all on board to keep it above water for the 44-day journey.
Throughout their desperate voyage, Rowland and Elizabeth thought of happy days on board the Duff and the hopes they’d had for their mission to Tahiti. Everything appeared lost. They weren’t going home to England, but instead were headed for the nearest place inhabited by white men – a miserable penal colony at the end of the civilised earth. Why had God allowed this awful thing to happen? The desolation of that time must have reflected on their faces every time Rowland and Elizabeth recalled that journey.
Meeting Reverend Marsden
The Reverend Samuel Marsden met the missionaries on their arrival at Port Jackson on 14 May 1798. While not very pleased with their decision to leave the mission post, Marsden, the Reverend Richard Johnson and their families treated the Hassalls very kindly.
Rowland and Elizabeth stayed on Marsden’s small farm near Parramatta and made use of the fruit and vegetables available there while the Nautilus prepared to sail south for the sealing grounds off Van Dieman’s Land (now Tasmania). Rowland was later to write of the Marsdens as among his ‘best and dearest Friends in the Colony’, although the relationship seems to have cooled somewhat in later years.
Work was found for some of the missionaries as preachers and school teachers, and, for those who sought to remain in the colony, Governor Hunter gave them land so they could settle as farmers. Cover, Oakes and Hassall each received title to 100 acres of land in April 1799, not far from Marsden’s land. Rowland added another 30 acres to his by purchase. The area granted to him roughly covered what is now the Pennant Hills golf course, but at that time it was known simply as part of the Dundas district.
In an effort to help the Hassalls establish themselves, Marsden sent seeds, with planting and breeding stock. William Henry and Dr James Mileham (of whom we shall hear more later) also received grants of 100 acres in the area, although Henry’s land was restored to the Crown for use as a government stock farm when he returned to Tahiti to join the courageous band that had remained on the island despite the tumults. The rent on each of these parcels was two shillings per year, commencing after five years.
Rowland was primarily employed as a caretaker on one of Marsden’s farms at North Brush but, with his evangelist brother Francis Oakes, he is believed to have sidelined in the profitable rum trade.
In 1800 he was appointed Keeper of the Grain Store at Parramatta, where it was his duty to receive grain from settlers into stores and distribute it on the authority of the Commissariat Department. He lost the post in humiliating circumstances when it was found he had failed to detect forgeries of the Deputy Commissary’s signature on orders supposedly requisitioning produce for His Majesty’s use. But his reputation cannot have been badly affected as Governor King later left the management of his pastoral affairs in Rowland’s hands when he travelled to England.
On 16 July 1800, Reverends Johnson and Marsden opened a chapel at Kissing Point, which was to become in time the Church of St Anne’s at Ryde. Built by subscription, the thrifty Rowland contributed £20 himself.
By August 1801, only three of the eleven missionaries who had arrived on the Nautilus – Rowland, Francis Oakes and Edward Main – remained in the colony.
In January 1807, the (by that time) pro-missionary King Pomare of Tahiti wrote personally to Rowland looking for a still so he could make rum for bartering: ‘I shall esteem it a favour if you can procure me a still, in return for which, if hogs will be acceptable, please write to me that I may know how many.’ Rowland had to explain that regulations forbade his acceding to the request as matters then stood; he was able to send only his wife’s remembrances and his own to Pomare’s ‘dear Queen’.
Pomare had clearly been preparing for another battle because rebellion broke out again in Tahiti at the end of 1808 and some missionaries were forced to return to New South Wales. Firearms and powder had been used by European traders in the Society Islands from pre-missionary times and it was chiefly as a consequence of his superior firepower that Pomare II won final ascendancy at the battle of Feipi in November 1815.
Rowland and Thomas Hassall were consistent suppliers of weapons and ammunition to their brethren on the islands who, unfortunately, in the absence of contrary rules from the London Missionary Society, bartered them for produce, services and favours.