James WILLIAMS was born in London about 1808 and his father was, according to his oldest son from his second marriage, a Publican and Carrier. His parents were never listed on records and therefore his background remains a mystery. There are suggestions that he arrived in Australia as a ?free carpenter? but again, we don?t really know. We do know that James arrived in New Zealand in either 1827 or 1829 as one of John ?Jacky? Guard?s crew. Guard has been attributed as running the first whaling station in New Zealand (I cringe at the thought, but oil was a necessity for burning lamps in the days before electricity). James was employed as carpenter and cooper, no doubt carrying out ship repairs and building barrels for the oil to be held and transported to Sydney and then London. James was therefore one of the first settlers to New Zealand; he arrived after the first missionaries (the missionary Rev Thomas Kendall was to become James? step-grandfather via his second marriage) but well before the first New Zealand Company settlers? arrival from 1840 ? which included James? bride-to-be. It was also a time of lawlessness and a lot of escaped and ex convicts worked as whalers. It was a tough and dirty business and the whalers were often ?fuelled? by alcohol. The whale station owners therefore had to be tough themselves.
After a number of years working for John Guard, James started to branch out into his own business of trading. He bought a schooner called the Shamrock, possibly from Sydney in 1831 when it was built, which he used to transport whalebone, flax and potatoes. It was around this time that he was probably known as ?Cloudy Bay Williams,? the bay from which he traded ? possibly to distinguish him from Peter Williams, who began whaling in Preservation Inlet around John Guard?s time. The seas off New Zealand?s coast however, can be perilous and in 1834 the Shamrock capsized and sank in Queen Charlotte?s sound. Newspapers reported that seven Maori and three European members of crew lost their lives. James, the Master, was one of the survivors. This was not the last shipwreck James survived. The next wreck, some years later, also involved his wife Jane.
Jane FLORANCE arrived at Port Nicholson, Wellington, New Zealand, from Gravesend, London, aboard the ship Bolton on 20 April 1840; she had not long turned 21 years of age. Jane, who was born in Surrey (she was baptised in Dulwich College Chapel), travelled with her father, mother, two sisters, paternal aunt and her brother and his wife. Her father, a gardener, decided to leave England to join his brother Thomas Florance, who had arrived in New Zealand in 1834, via Canada and Australia. Thomas, who married Rev Thomas Kendall?s daughter Elizabeth in Sydney, is noted as New Zealand?s first surveyor and Justice of Peace. (John and Thomas had planned to start a timber cutting business but due to land disputes, this did not occur and John, his wife Jane and their two youngest daughters ended up immigrating to Maine, USA where they remained).
The voyage on the ship Bolton was recorded by passenger Miss Hannah Butler, daughter of Rev John Gare Butler, who also recorded in her diary that her father ?Married James Williams of Cloudy Bay, and Jane Florence. Mr. Smith, Saml. Florence and myself present.? (http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-BarEarl-t1-body-d12-d2.html)
Jane married James, 10 years older, on 4 July 1840 on Petone Beach, Wellington, New Zealand, just two and-a-half months after she had stepped off the boat. While we don?t have an engraving of James, we are fortunate to have an account of him, as recorded by the young Edward Jerningham WAKEFIELD, son of Edward Gibbons Wakefield who started the New Zealand Association in London, to colonise New Zealand with free European settlers. Edward, a year younger than Jane, accompanied his Uncle Colonel William Hayward Wakefield on the colonizing expedition and recorded his experiences in a book called The Adventure In New Zealand 1839 ? 1844; With Some Account of the Beginning of the British Colonization of the Islands?, published in 1845 (available as a free e-book). His account of James, who had piloted Wakefield along the coast of New Zealand on occasion, is as follows:
?I was just now about to proceed to Wanganui by sea, having chartered a decked schooner of twelve tons burthen for the purpose of keeping my engagement with E Kuru. The owner of the vessel was our old friend Williams, the carpenter of Te-awa-iti, who had suddenly sprung into great opulence and fame. He had been to Sydney and persuaded a merchant there to fit him out as the head of a whaling-station in Port Underwood [Tom Cane?s Bay]. Soon after his return he bought this craft off the man who built her in Cloudy Bay, for 330l. [named ?Jane?]; and married one of the female immigrants from England [Jane Florance], with a very noisy wedding-feast at Pitone. He used now to speculate largely in all sorts of small trade, still more largely on all subjects, and astonish the quiet folks of Port Nicholson by his dress and swagger. He wore a cap ornamented with gold lace, a new suit of glossy black, and a gold watch and chain, the glitter of which might be distinguished from one end of the beach to the other. ?Cloudy Bay Williams? however, as he was called, was very good humoured and harmless, and bore the name of being no less open-handed towards his whaling associates than in his poorer days; so that he was by no means disliked, even by those who laughed at the assumption of grand airs and the title of ?Captain? by the ci-devant carpenter.? Chapter 14, page 397 (e-book) TBA. James Payne Williams immigrated to Australia to Cloudy Bay about 1828.
2 He was a worked as a carpenter and cooper at whaling station Cloudy Bay, J Guard. in 1829.
2