Carrying On A South

Seas Tradition

One of the interesting minor figures in the early history of the Pacific Islands was Captain John Nicholson, master of the missionary ship Haweis and other vessels that plied between the Society Islands, Tonga, New Zealand and Australia.

Nicholson, originally of the Royal Navy, went from England to Moorea in 1818 to take command of the Haweis, which had been launched there that same year. His first task was to survey part of Moorea’s east coast and remove the printing equipment that the LMS missionaries had set up at Afareaitu the previous year to print the first books ever produced in the South Seas.

Nicholson was in the Pacific at a sufficiently early stage to make a discovery or two and to leave his name on the map.

One of his discoveries was a shoal south of Tonga, originally called Nicholson’s Reefs, but now known as

Minerva Reef after the brig Minerva, wrecked there in 1 829. Another of his dis coveries was the harbour of Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, which is still called Port Nicholson.

Captain Nicholson even tually settled in Sydney and became the port’s harbour master. He left many de scendants, one of whom is lan Hawkins Nicholson, a captain in the Royal Australian Navy, This latter-day Captain Nicholson has just made a valuable contribution to the study of early South Seas maritime history as the com piler of a book entitled Ship ping Arrivals and Departures, Sydney, 1826-1840.

The book is a companion volume to John Cumpston’s Shipping Arrivals and Depar tures, Sydney 1788-1826, which was published in 1963.

In reviewing the Cumpston volume in these columns in September 1963, the present reviewer said that Australian