Arthur Wakefield

Arthur Wakefield

Arthur Wakefield (born November 19, 1799 in Burnham Wick , Essex , England , † June 17, 1843 in Tuamarina , Wairau River , New Zealand ) came from the Wakefield family and was a captain, representative of the New Zealand Company and founder of Nelson , New Zealand.

The best known of his siblings were the brothers Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862), Daniel Bell Wakefield (1798-1858), William Hayward Wakefield (1801-1848) and Felix Wakefield (1807-1875).

Live and act

As the fourth child of Edward Wakefield (1774–1854) and Susanna Crash (1767–1816), after their father had lost his farm in 1807 and lived in Westminster , London , he grew up mainly with his grandmother Priscilla Bell ( Quaker and writer (1751– 1832)) in Tottenham , London. His mother Susanna and some of his siblings lived in changing constellations in the grandmother's house .

He was eight years old when he began his education at Tottenham Grammar School in London. To Edward Wakefield, his father, he was the most manageable boy among his brothers. Devout and obedient in school, he became one of the most popular students. It's not entirely clear why his father put him in the Royal Navy . What is certain, however, is that in 1810, at the age of eleven, he entered the Royal Navy as a cadet under the care of Captain Philip Beaver , his father's best old and intimate friend. On June 10, 1810, he went to the Cape of Good Hope on the Nisus , a Lively Class frigate , just fully equipped in the Plymouth Dockyard . This was the beginning of a 30-year career as a seaman. In all these years he was at home on almost every ocean of the world, spoke fluent French and Spanish , was never seriously wounded in any confrontation, and gradually made his rise to senior lieutenant in the Royal Navy.

In 1837 his brother Edward Gibbon interested him in the New Zealand Company and their settlement projects in New Zealand . When he was to take over the management of the first settlement project Port Nicholson , later Wellington , for the New Zealand Company in 1839 , his appointment as captain on the HMS Radamanthus in the Mediterranean was imminent and so he turned it down in favor of his brother William Hayward . In 1841 he resigned from the Royal Navy and then founded and managed the Nelson settlement as a representative of the New Zealand Company .

On February 1, 1842, when the first settlers arrived in Tasman Bay , he founded the city of Nelson with Frederick Tuckett , a British civil engineer and surveyor hired by the New Zealand Company . From the outset, Tuckett and Wakefield disagreed on the approach to settlement and the suitability of the land. In addition, there was not enough promised and usable land for the settlers. When Wakefield made a mistake and decided to take action against the local Ngāti Toa in order to take possession of their fertile land on the Wairau plain in supposed right, the first armed conflict between European settlers and the Māori , who as Wairau turmoil first New Zealand war in the history of New Zealand should take. In addition to 22 settlers and numerous Māori, Arthur Wakefield was also killed in the conflict.

He died on June 17, 1843 in Tuamarina, Wairau River , near what is now Blenheim , as a result of his injuries.

literature

• Philip Temple : A sort of conscience - The Wakefields . Auckland University Press , Auckland 2002, ISBN 1-86940-276-6 (English).
• Arthur S. Thomson : The Story of New Zealand . John Murray , London 1859 (English).

Web links

• Bernard John Foster : Wakefield, Captain Arthur, RN . In: An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand . Alexander Hare McLintock , April 22, 2009, accessed May 25, 2016 . 
• The Wairau Incident . Marlborough Online,accessed May 25, 2016.