The Harriet affair - a frontier of chaos?

The Harriet affair, 1834

The rescue of Betty Guard and her two children from Ngati Ruanui in September 1834 involved the first use of British troops on New Zealand soil. A British House of Commons inquiry into the affair in 1835 was critical of what it described as excessive force by the rescue party.

The wreck of the Harriet

On 29 April 1834 the whaler John (Jacky) Guard, his wife Elizabeth and their two children were returning from a trip to Sydney aboard the barque Harriet. Under the command of Captain Hall, the Harriet was caught in a gale and driven ashore near Rahotu on the Taranaki coast.

In true survivor style the castaways used the ship's sails to make tents. Several days later, they were attacked by a group of Taranaki Maori who plundered the wreck. Then they were set upon by Ngati Ruanui who, perhaps aggrieved at the lack of plunder available, attacked the survivors. In the ensuing struggle, 12 of the Harriet's crew were killed, including Betty's brother. Betty herself narrowly escaped death.

The Guards and a number of others were captured. After two weeks Jacky and several other men were released on the understanding that they would return with a cask of gunpowder as ransom for the rest of the party. They eventually reached Sydney, where Guard secured support from Governor Bourke for the rescue of those still held in Taranaki.

For the four months it took Jacky and the rescue party to return, Betty lived under the protection of a chief called Oaoiti. According to some accounts she was well treated and lived with Oaoiti as a wife. At the time of her rescue, eyewitnesses described her as calm and collected.

Settler woman savaged in brutal attack!

A sensationalised account of Betty's capture that appeared in the Sydney Herald on 17 November 1834 emphasised Maori savagery:

[The Maori] stripped her and her children naked, dragged her to their huts, and would have killed her, had not a Chief's wife kindly interfered on her behalf, and when the bludgeon was raised with that intention, threw a rug over her person, and saved her life … They afterwards delivered the youngest child [Louisa] to the mother, and took the other away into the bush, and Mrs. Guard did not see it [John] for two months after.

Betty Guard also described how she 'saw the Natives cut up and eat those they killed belonging to the Harriet'.

The rescue

There is evidence that Jacky Guard wanted Maori punished not just for this action but for previous encounters. The previous year Maori had pillaged his ship Waterloo after it ran aground on Waikanae beach. Also, three Maori workers at his station at Kakapo Bay had been killed and eaten by a Ngai Tahu taua. The capture of his family was the last straw, and the desire to teach Maori a lesson was no doubt uppermost in Guard's mind when he approached Bourke for support.

The man-of-war HMS Alligator and the colonial schooner Isabella arrived in Taranaki in September 1834 with a detachment of 60 men from the 50th Regiment. These soldiers were the first British troops to come into armed combat with Maori. Jacky Guard and some of his men accompanied the party.

Ngati Ruanui assumed that the Europeans had come to negotiate the release of the captives and that, as was customary, they could expect something in exchange. Instead, Oaoiti was captured bayonet and captured. Captain Robert Lambert, commander of the Alligator, had a clear no-ransom policy.

Four days later, on 25 September, Betty and her baby daughter were located at Te Namu pa. A rescue party assaulted and burnt the pa, and Betty and Louisa were given up in exchange for Oaoiti. John Guard junior had been taken to the nearby pa of Waimate. The Alligator and Isabella bombarded Waimate for three hours before landing, on 8 October, with a full force of officers and men as well as a six-pounder gun. John junior was grabbed off the back of an old chief who was then summarily shot. Another account appeared in the Sydney Herald:

One of the sailors reached the boy first and, finding him fastened to the man's back by an old mat, took out his knife, and securing the boy, deliberately drew his knife across the man's throat.

John junior's rescue sparked a full-scale engagement. The Sydney Herald continued:

finding the child safe, [the crew of the Harriet] now determined to take full revenge for the murder of their shipmates, and there being about 103 natives on the beach, we fired on them; and the soldiers on the hill supposing that orders had been given for firing commenced a discharge of musketry upon them.

Fighting continued over the next few days as rough seas prevented a speedy re-embarkation of the troops.

The aftermath

In 1835 a Committee of the House of Commons condemned the excessive force used against Maori in the rescue. Humanitarian groups such as the Church Missionary Society (CMS) protested long and loud about the Harriet affair and argued that unrestrained colonisation had to be avoided in the interests of Maori. A petition organised by the CMS and Wesleyan Missionary Society in 1837 asked the British government to do more to protect Maori.

The attitudes of men like Jacky Guard, who had a less-than-flattering reputation before this event, perhaps confirmed the fears of the humanitarian lobby. When asked how he believed Maori could be civilised, Guard was reputed to have said:

How would I civilise them? Shoot them to be sure! A musket ball for every New Zealander is the only way of civilising their country.

Louisa Guard died in early 1835, possibly as a result of injuries suffered in the initial skirmish. Betty was said to have given birth to twins that were described as 'rather dark', fuelling rumours that Oaoiti was the father. However, she is also recorded as having a second son by Jacky in late 1835, returning to Kakapo Bay with her family early the following year, having another six children and living until 1870.