Soon May the Wellerman Come - Not Just a Shanty

 If you've been on TikTok at all in the last year I'm sure you've heard various versions of the popular sea shanty "The Wellerman," singing "Soon May the Wellerman come, to bring us sugar and tea and rum," referring to the Weller Brothers supply ships.  

The Weller Brothers were Joseph, George, and Edward Weller, a wealthy family who had emigrated from Kent England to Otago Heads, Dunedin Australia in the early 1820s.  The move was originally made to attempt to cure Joseph's tuberculosis, but soon found himself interested in maritime trading, so after a short trip back home he brought his siblings and parents all back with him to Sydney where they founded a brand new business in Otakou, on the Otago Peninsula.  Their first ship was purchased by George in 1826, named the Albion.  Soon they also had The Dublin Packet, The Joseph Weller, and The Lucy Ann, shipping large quantities of whale oil and bone, along with trade in timber, potatoes, and dried fish.

Weller Landing Mark

Business was good, but a dangerous affair.  Joseph visited Stewart Island New Zealand and then made a settlement at Otago, NZ claiming territory in the name of William IV to establish a whaling station.  Joseph and George traded in flax (for sails) and spars, (used for ship masts) at both Hokianga NZ and Otago, being the only merchants regularly trading from one end of New Zealand to the other.  Fire destroyed the Otago station not long after it started doing business, but it was rebuilt.  Then Edward was kidnapped and held ransom by Maori, with which traders held a tense relationship, with both settlements being regularly ransacked.  By 1833, trade was booming and other Europeans began to settle in Otago, with 80 of them living there by 1835.  Edward had become the resident manager of the Otago operation, with George managing the Sydney station.  A measles epidemic brought to the Island wiping out a great many of the native Maori, and the same year Joseph died - with Edward shipping his body back to Sydney in a casket of rum.

By the end of the 1830 whale products had reached a peak, and so did business.  Large Tariffs on the Weller's trade items (as they were considered foreigners, since New Zealand was not a British Colony) turned the brothers attention to accumulating large parcels of land instead, eventually accumulating over 3,000,000 acres.  After that, two areas totaling half a million acres on and around Banks Peninsula were bought for £67, which like all other payments to the Maoris was made in kind – arms, clothing, spirits, and hardware. Two more purchases of 500,000 acres and 400,000 acres were made in Canterbury for an overall consideration of £82. Then the brothers went to the North Island and acquired another area of nearly half a million acres on the East Coast for a single cask of gunpowder. Further transactions at strategic points in the South Island, involving areas from 3,200 acres to 56,000 acres, added to their huge domain.  Edward strategically married Chief Tahatu's daughter Paparu, and had a daughter named Fanny.  After Paparu's death he married the warrior Taiaroa's daughter Nikuru, having with her a daughter named Nani.  

                              

Unfortunately, after the 1840 proclamation of sovereignty, all past purchases had to be investigated and approved by the Crown.  The remaining brothers prepared to fight for their land claims, but the court proceedings turned out to be "Utterly ruinous."  The Court rejected every one of their claims and recommended to the Government that “no grant be made”. The documents of the hearing, (which can still be found in the National Archives in Wellington) show the dogged nature of the fight the Wellers put up, but they were doomed from the start.  George fought hardest to retain ownership of Stewart Island, which he owned in it's entirety, but it was also thrown out.  This, coupled with the sudden decline in whale products, ultimately left the brothers bankrupt.

This has not diminished their fame, and not just with the Wellerman shanty.  In 1842 a seaman named Herman Melville deserted off the Weller's ship Lucy Ann off the coast of Tahiti, which it seems is something he was prone to doing, as he boarded and jumped a handful of ships from 1841 to his enlistment in the US navy in 1843.  His time aboard these whaling ships, including the Lucy Ann, along with a second-hand story told to him of the hunt of the white whale Mocha Dick, eventually turned into the story we've all ready at least once, Moby Dick.