xxiv SUBANTARCTIC ISLANDS OF NEW ZEALAND. [Historical. 



and he succeeded in obtaining a grant from the Crown assigning Auckland Island to 

 his company as the station suitable for this purpose. In 1849 he issued a further 

 work on the Auckland Islands pointing out the suitability of them as a base for the 

 whale-fishery in the southern seas, and as a result of his efforts the company was 

 formed, and a settlement was established at Port Ross, in Auckland Island, with 

 >Ir. Enderby as " Cluef Commissioner to the Company and Lieutenant-Governor 

 of the Auckland Islands." The expedition landed on the 4th December, 1849. Con- 

 siderable enthusiasm seems to have been aroused, and before leaving England Mr. 

 Enderby was entertained at a farewell dinner on the 18th April, 1849, at which 

 Rear-Admiral J. W. D. Dundas, C.B., M.P., acted as chairman, and four hundred 

 guests, including members of Parliament and other prominent persons, were present. 

 Though launched with so much enthusiasm and such high hopes, the scheme failed. 

 The climate and the results of the fishery did not prove so attractive in reality as they 

 had appeared in the prospectus of the company, and after two or three years the 

 settlement was abandoned, leaving little trace of its position, beyond the small area 

 of land that had been cleared of bush and the lonely cemetery still to be seen at 

 Port Ross. 



For some years after this little worthy of record happened in connection with 

 these islands, though they were not altogether without notice in published works. 

 .\n edition of R. M. Martin's " History of the British Colonies " which appeared in 

 1851 contains references to the Auckland Islands, &c. ; and in 1854 was published 

 E. Malone's " Three Years' Cruise in the Australasian Colonies." The writer was an 

 officer on H.M.S. " Fantome," and gives a good account of the Auckland Islands 

 and the Enderby Settlement. 



There appears to be no further reference to these islands until attention was 

 once more called to them by disastrous shipwrecks. These islands have, unfortu- 

 nately, been the scene of many shipwrecks, and in several cases castaway sailors 

 have had to endure a miserable existence on them for many months. How many 

 disasters occurred in the old sealing-days will perhaps never be known, but within 

 the last forty-five or fifty years there have been many shipwrecks, most of them 

 with sad loss of life. 



One of the best known is that of the schooner " Grafton," the story of which 

 has been told by the publication of the private journal of the captain, Thomas Mus- 

 grave, and also by an account by T. E. Raynai, who acted as mate, though he was 

 really representing the owners, and was himself part owner of the ship. The vessel 

 left Sydney on the 29th December, 1863, with a crew of three men in addition to 

 the captain and mate, and sailed to Campbell Island, for the purpose of investigat- 

 ing mines of argentiferous tin which were supposed to exist there. About a month 

 was spent at the Campbell Islands without any success so far as the primary object 

 of the trip was concerned, though a number of seals were captured. While at Camp- 

 bell Island Raynai became seriously ill, and for more than a month was unable to 

 assist in the working of the vessel. The ship then proceeded to the Auckland Islands, 

 and entered Carnley Harbour, though the captain imagined he was in Sarah's Bosom 

 — t.c. Port Ross. He made his way some distance up the harbour and entered 

 the North Arm, but, owing to the difficulty of finding a safe anchorage and to the 

 violence of a storm that suddenly arose, the ship was driven on the rocks, and the 

 party had to make the best of their way to the shore. Here they all lived for twenty 



