210 “YACHTING IN MELANESIA. 
The mission carpenter at Norfolk Island told me a story illustrating 
the general opinion held in Auckland as to the Bishop’s ability to box. 
During the time of the Maori war a man-of-war’s man and a marine 
were fighting in Queen Street when the Bishop happened to be passing 
by. An onlooker said to Kendall, the carpenter, “‘Do you see those 
two fellows fighting? Well, there goes someone who could take it out 
of the two of them with one hand!’ Kendall pretended ignorance and 
asked who was meant, “‘Why, the Bishop of course,” said the other. 
Champion, of the Undine, used to recount how at Tanna, where the 
Bishop went first in 1849, a native came off and proceeded to air his 
knowledge of English, which was mostly of a blasphemous and filthy 
nature. ‘The Bishop ordered the man to leave the ship and on his 
refusal bundled him over the side into the water. The man swam 
ashore and joined a group on the beach, and then the Bishop told 
Champion to lower the dinghy. ‘‘ But, my lord,” protested Champion, 
‘surely you are not going to venture on shore.” ‘“‘ Lower the dinghy” 
was the order. ‘The Bishop then got into it and sculled himself to 
shore. 
Selwyn’s lack of conventionality and his indifference to what is 
generally regarded as the convenances of his position and his desire to 
get on with what he had in hand are well exemplified by the story of his 
carrying ashore from the ship the boxes of his chaplain, who had just 
arrived from England, and in later years we read of Selwyn himself 
superintending the recoppering of the mission ship at Kawau. 
One result of Bishop Selwyn’s first voyage to Melanesia in the 
Undine was that he obtained five native boys whom he took up to 
Auckland and thus practically started the Melanesian Mission. In the 
following year a voyage was made to the same islands again and Tanna 
also was visited. Some Anaiteum people were returned from Tanna 
and owing to heavy weather the crossing took two days, and the 
Undine had 35 people on board all that time. 
In 1851 the Undine was replaced by the Border Maid, a schooner 
of 100 tons and costing £1,200, the money being subscribed in Sydney 
and Newcastle. ‘The support of the ship was guaranteed in Sydney 
and by the Eton Association for helping the Melanesian Mission, and 
ever since then Eton has nobly done its duty by the Mission year after 
year. The founding of the Australian Board of Missions was another 
of the results of Selwyn’s visit to Sydney that year. The Bishop 
lamented the passing of the little Undine, which had carried him so 
well over 24,000 miles of sea. 
In company with Bishop Tyrrell of Newcastle, a voyage was made 
in the Border Maid to the southern New Hebrides, to New Caledonia, 
to Santa Cruz, and tothe Solomons. At Malekula in the New Hebrides 
the whole ship’s company were in serious peril of their lives, Bishop 
