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From 1833 onwards, the Wellermen, on ships owned by Weller Brothers of Sydney, supplied provisions to New Zealand shore whaling stations from their base at Otakou. 
Mau Mai Te WerimanaThis
Maori-language version was translated by Justin Kereama
and performed by the Harmonic Resonators. The words here
have been chosen to give a rhyming version rather than an
exact translation.
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The Needleman I’ll
tell you how this all began
A jungle virus in Wuhan First it went from bat to man Then round the world it flew. The tourists flocked here, more and more, And down on us the Covid bore Jacinta roused her team and swore To lay that virus low. Soon may the
Needleman come
An' vaccinate us one by one One day when the Covid is gone We can drop our masks and go . . . FOR A COFFEE! YEAHHH! The world’s upturned, so much disorder We’re now locked down inside our border. An' I've became a loo roll hoarder 'Cause I still have to go! It's 40 weeks or even more Since I've slept with sweet Elenore Frustration's now at Level Four We're ready to explode! Soon may the
Needleman come
An' vaccinate us one by one One day when the Covid is gone We can drop our masks and go... AN’ MAKE LOVE AGAIN! As far as I know, the fight’s still on We still wear masks, the bug’s not gone The Needleman makes his regular call To jab the arms of one and all. Soon may the
Needleman come
An' vaccinate us one by one One day when the Covid is gone We can drop our masks and go... ANYWHERE WE WANT TO! YEAHHH! |
Substitute your own frustrated desire at the end of each chorus. Our New Zealand leader is PM Jacinta Ardern, but substitute your own leader and your own country's Covid response. Or write alternative (humorous?) verses to evoke your own situation.
Some New Zealanders were swayed by American social media and protested the anti-pandemic lockdowns and vaccinations by driving in convoy to parliament in Wellington and staging a long-term protest there. Me And Convoy22
Other New Zealand Sea Shanties
Tonguing
The Billy of Tea
The phrase billy of tea was first noted in Australian usage in 1839. A "billy" was made by Australian gold miners who put a handle made out of no. 8 wire on an empty tin which had contained tinned meat, and which was bent into a point at the edge to make a "bill" for easy pouring. They hung it over their fire to boil water for making a drink of tea.I started wondering if whalers who were former goldminers had given this new slang word to a ship with a name like "William O' Toole" or "William O. Thompson." So I went searching on the internet.
A search of the New Bedford Free Public Library's wonderfully-detailed Whaling ship database shows that the "William Rotch" made two whaling voyages out of New Bedford, from June 1843 to May 1847, and from Sept 1847 to October 1851. The second voyage was to the Pacific, the first was not detailed, but possibly to there also. Was this the original "Billy O T" ??
Whaling in New Zealand
In the 18th and 19th centuries, whale oil was was in great demand for lubricating industrial machinery, and as a clean burning fuel for lamps.In the late 18th century, whaling ships came from Europe, America, and Australia to catch whales the waters off New Zealand. The whalers quickly discovered that whales from the mid Pacific Ocean, began to arrive off the west coast of New Zealand in early May each year, and made their way south past Kapiti Island and the mainland, heading through Cook Strait for Kaikoura and then Stewart Island.
So whalers set up Whaling Stations in those areas where the whales were known to frequent or pass through:
- 1828, Cloudy Bay, Foveaux Strait
- 1829, Arapawa Island, Malborough Sounds
- 1831, Weller's Bay Whaling Station, Otago Harbour.
- pre-1837, Richards & Co two stations on Kapiti Island
- 1837, A. Oliver at Ocean Bay and Port Underwood
- 1839, Acker Whaling Station Colihoc [Colac] Bay, Stewart Island
- ----, Preservation Harbour, Foveaux Sound,
- 1841, Fyffe Whaling Station, Kaikoura
- ----, Mana island, near Wellington
- 1846, Tuatuku Station, Sth-east Stewart Island
The workers at these bay-whaling stations were not paid wages, they were paid in slops (ready made clothing), spirits and tobacco. Weller Bros were major suppliers of shore whalers supplies, as this 1839 contract to supply the Acker whaling station at Colac Bay shows:
Agreement with Lewis Acker 24th Dec 1839 to whale at Colihoc Bay, Centre Island. Weller Bros to provide casks, trypot, as required for a fishery (3 boats) and supply provisions and gear. . .However the Wellers failed to supply provisions for that 1840 season. When the vessel eventually turned up, Acker had disposed of the boats and gear and was getting ready to return to America.
Wellers' Whaling Station
Joseph Weller, a wealthy Englishman businessman, was unwell, suffering from Tb, and was advised by his doctor to take a sea voyage. He became interested in emigrating to Australia and arrived there with his wife and sons in 1830.Some of the family's ample capital was invested in land and property but their main interest was directed towards whaling and in 1831 he purchased a barque the "Lucy Ann." After obtaining a crew and provisions, two of his sons, Joseph Jr and Edward, set sail for New Zealand in it, in September 1831.
They landed in Port Chalmers at a promontory 'Te Umu Kuri' (which became known as Wellers' Rock) to the south of Tairoa Head - and established a whaling station there.
It is not known what arrangements were made with the local Maori, but construction of the whaling station started immediately. However a few months later, the station and its whalers houses were been burned to the ground by a Maori raiding party.
Whaling operations in 1832 were clearly severely restricted by this, but in May 1832 Weller sent his son George from Sydney in the Lucy Ann to help his brothers re-establish the Station for the 1833 bay-whaling season. With Joseph Jr. in charge, whaling at Otakou (as the Weller station was then known) was very successful, with 130 tuns (barrels) of whale oil being collected. A tun (barrel holding 950 litres) of sperm oil sold for about £45, a year's wages for an educated person, and a tun of right whale oil sold for about £15, a year's wages for a labourer.
In 1834 Joseph Jr. became ill with Tb and died, and because there was not yet a Christian burial ground or minister anywhwere in Otago, his young brother Edward pickled his corpse in a puncheon of rum and shipped it back to Sydney for burial.
- a Free Church of Scotland settlement was established in Otago in 1848.So Edward Weller became manager of Weller's Otakou establishment when he was only twenty years of age. For a few years the business flourished, becoming one of the biggest whaling stations on the New Zealand coast, and did considerable business with calling ships as a general store.
Difficulties began to increase. The number of whales using those coastal waters became fewer in number; opposition from other whalers became more severe; there were difficulties over land possession, both with the local Maori and also with the New Zealand Government. In 1840 Edward Weller returned to Sydney due to to ill health and did not return.
Octavious Harwood, an employer of Wellers, then bought part of the Otakou station in partnership with C.W. Schultze the Station's manager, and they ran it together -mainly as a general store for other whalers.
Dr Edward Pohau Ellison, OBE
Edward Weller's grandson, Edward Pohau Ellison, had a long and faithful career as a Medical Officer and Public Servant in the Pacific Islands.
Edward's paternal grandfather, Thomas Ellison, had left his home in England as a cabin boy on one of the East India Company's boats, settled in Australia and later went whaling in Otakou, and then established his own whaling station further to the north in the Malborough Sounds. He married Ika-i-raua, daughter of the chief Whati of the Ngati-Tama. After Thomas was drowned in a storm at sea, his whaling station was taken over by a son, Raniera Ellison.
At the same time, at the Weller brothers whaling station at Otakou, Edward Weller's first wife Paparu died, and he then married Nikuru Taiaroa, who also died, after giving birth to her first child, Hannah Nani Tairoa Weller.
Raniera Ellison gave up whaling for goldmining, and in later years he married Hannah Weller. They moved to a farm near Otaki, where Edward Ellison was born, and after many difficulties, graduated in medicine at Otago University. Te Hou
.............
...........Te Whati
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....Te Ikairaua m. Thomas Ellison
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Matenga Taiaroa m. Hinewhareua
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......... Nikuru Taiaroa m. Edward Weller
......... .......................|Raniera Ellison .............m. ....... ....Hannah Nani Weller
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.Edward Pohau Ellison..........
Maude Gonne's version
This version was also picked up by the Pioneer Pog'n'Scroggin Bush Band.
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Mike Moroney writes;
"The fiddle player in the Pog band at that time was Tarek Bazley (whom you hear interviewing auspicious people on National Radio these days). Tarek was also a member of a fantastic, yet rough-as-guts, originals band called Maud Gonne that had a strong celt-folk feel to them. We picked up that version of Wellerman pretty much as is from Tarek's band."
Origins of the "Wellerman" song
Neil Colquhoun (Auckland, NZ) collected "Soon May the Wellerman Come" in about 1966 from someone called F. R. Woods.Mr. Woods, who was then in his 80s, told Colquhoun he had learnt this song and also the song "John Smith A.B.," from his uncle.
"John Smith AB" was printed in The Bulletin Sydney in 1904, where it was attributed to D. H. Rogers (and contributed by F. R. Woods?)
It is possible that D. H. Rogers was the uncle of F. R. Woods' and that it was he who composed "Soon may the Wellerman Come" and "John Smith A.B."
If Rogers had been born around about 1820, then he could have been a teenaged sailor and/or shore whaler around NZ in the late 1830s, settled in Australia, written the shanties in his later years as his composing skills developed, and then taught them to his nephew in his 70s-early 80s, some time between 1890 and 1904.
However further investigation shows that D. H. Rogers (1865-1933) came to Dunedin in 1870 when his parents migrated from Scotland. He gained considerable experience in the mercantile marine working as an accountant for the Union Steam Ship Company from the ages of 15 to 35. As a young man he would have undoubtedly been been told many stories by the old windjammer sailors. Later he was an accountant for various Otago gold dredging companies, and as the aches and pains of an ageing body in a cold, damp came to him, the verses he published show a romantic yen for the life of those windjammer sailors:- of high adventure in tropic climes and a sudden early death.
As Wellerman shows none of these traits, we can conclude D H Rodgers did not compose it.
Neil Colquhoun published Wellerman in the 2nd edition of Song of a Young Country, (Reed NZ, 1972).
Another edition of this book was published in England (Bailey Brothers and Swinfen 1972). This was purchased in Scotland by American chantyman Chris Morgan, who added Wellerman to his repetoire. He lent the book to Maine folksinger Gordon Bok who also sung and recorded it.
"Wellerman" on record
1975 Phil Garland, Colonial Yesterdays, (LP)
1977? Cant. Crutchings Bush and Ceilidh Band, Landfall New Zealand (cass.)
1977 Irish Rovers, "The Irish Rovers in New Zealand" (NZBC Program)
1994 The Maud Gonne Band, The Difficult Third Album (LP) - changed lyrics
1985 The Morgans, Soundings for the Whale Conn. USA, (cass. )
1995 Bok, Muir & Trickett, And So Will We Yet Maine USA, (cass. CD)
1998 Pioneer Pog n' Scroggin Bush Band, Sesqui (CD) - changed lyrics
1998 Whole Peeled, Induce (CD) - changed lyrics
1998 Mike Harding, Past to the present (CD)
1999 Bill & Kath Worsfold. New Zealand Tour. (CD)
2003 The Maritime Crew, Under the Southern Cross (CD)
2005 Bruce Paine, Guitar@museum (CD)
2007 The Marit. Crew & Folgearster Folk, On The Road Together, Holland (CD)
2010 The 2009/10 NZ Secondary Students' Choir in concert. (CD)
2013 Wgtn Sea Shanty Society, That's What I Call Sea Shanties 1 (CD)
2014 The Maritime Crew. Under the Southern Cross (CD)
2016 The Maritime Crew. Rolling the whole world round. (CD)
2018 Rhodeworks. Unrealistic expectations. (CD)
2018 Song of a young country (CD)
2018 The Longest Johns, Between Wind and Water. Spotify (CD?)
2018 Wgtn Sea Shanty Society, Ahoy. Spotify (CD?)
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updated 2021, Werimana added April 2023