Many different people rode on the merchant
vessel HMS Buffalo before it was blown
onto the beach near Whitianga in 1840 while sheltering from a storm in
Mercury Bay.
D My friends, I gift
this tale, to G history
it per-D-tains,
About the ship, the Buffalo, and all her A
different D claims.
She started in Calcutta, and G
ended in re-D-mains.
I can tell you all the faces, and tell you A
all the D names.
So, let's G set her
out to sea
In eighteen-thirty-three: D Hey, ho, away she
goes,
The A ship, the Buffa-D-lo.
I was boarded on the ship, one catholic Mary
Murphy,
With all the other convict girls, from Portsmouth,
bound for Sydney.
If giving birth below the deck damn near didn't kill
me,
It was being fed only bread for being a disorderly.
We was all down in the bottom
With the stinking and the rotten.
Hey, ho, away she goes,
The ship, the Buffalo.
Well, my name is William Bell; a five month trip I
made
Under Captain Hindmarsh, to the place of Adelaide.
In the colony I stayed, where stories were oft relayed
Of Hindmarsh, made Governor, and the way his men
behaved:
Their fists were always swinging;
They'd be drunk, and they'd be singing,
Hey, ho, away she goes,
The ship, the Buffalo.
Ko Titore ahau: I'm the noble chief, Titore.
I wrote to William, King of England, telling him my
story
Of how we filled the Buffalo with the strongest spars
of kauri
For English ships to fight the French, should they
ever get to warring;
And how I'd like to purchase
As fine a ship as she is.
Hey, ho, away she goes,
The ship, the Buffalo.
I am Thomas Laslett, the botanist to the ship.
In Tairua we felled the finest trees that we saw fit.
The workers were all lazy sods who cared for not a
shit,
And the natives wouldn't take to saw 'til blessings
had been met.
But we filled her in the end
With spars for England.
Hey, ho, away she goes,
The ship, the Buffalo.
My story is of loss, my friends, for Captain Wood is
I;
We lost one good ship that night, and we lost two good
lives.
She broke the chains at Cook's Beach in that fierce
and cold July.
We tried to fight the howling winds, but couldn't
fight the tides;
With no pintle, or no anchor,
Mercury Bay's seas finally sank her.
Hey, ho, away she goes,
The ship, the Buffalo.
The Buffalo wrecked in this place many years long
gone;
Her story then entwined here as the town established
on.
And though there's little left of her, her ruins
spread along,
She's still alive in history, and still alive in song:
You can hear the crack of sails,
The ropes groaning in the gales...
...the seamen's cheers and wails.....
Hey, ho, away she goes,
The ship, the Buffalo.
Hey, ho, away she goes,
The ship, the Buffalo.
Hey!
The Buffalo
HMS Buffalo was a storeship of the Royal
Navy, built of teak in Calcutta and launched there
in 1813 as a rice carrier.
She serviced British military outposts in many
roles, including timber transporter and quarantine
vessel. In 1833, she was fitted as a convict ship
and took 180 female convicts to Australia.
In South Australia she served as a quarantine,
transport and colonization ship, in 1836 carrying
colonists there, leading to its proclamation as a
colony.
She also aiding the British expansion
into New South Wales, Tasmania and New Zealand, and
on one of these trips her captain received gifts of
a patu and a hei-tiki from the local chief Titore in
the Bay of Islands.
1839 she transported American and French prisoners
from Quebec to Australia, then took troops to New
Zealand, where she was fitted out as a timber
transporter again. She loaded some kauri spars at
the Bay of Islands, then completed her cargo by
loading more spars at Mercury Bay, departing from
there on 25 July 1840.
But in consequence of increasing bad
weather, she was compelled to return a few hours
later. She anchored off Whitianga until a rising
easterly gale parted her from her cables. When it
became clear that her crew could not save her, her
captain steered her onto the beach. All the crew
except two were saved, but she herself was a total
loss.
The wreck of HMS Buffalo is still visible today
offshore in Buffalo Bay near Whitianga, but only
from the air at low tide and in clear water
conditions. Divers have found that the teak spars
are still in good condition.
Stewart Pedley
Stewart is a multi-talented Whitianga
musician often heard playing rousing music with Kim
Bonnington, Richard Klein and Rhys Nicholas.
This song takes the audience inside the
minds of many different characters who
rode on the Buffalo.
A generation ago
Judith Delft kept drumming into us
aspiring young songwriters, "Don't
tell the audience about it; make them
experience it." And Stewart has
done just that, creating quite a
different personality in each verse to
bring the ship alive.
When I wrote similar songs in the 1980s,
I found I had to talk to the audience
first, to introduce them to the
background of each song and to teach
them the chorus. Stewart has cleverly
avoided both these necessities, by
starting with an introductory framing
verse and chorus.
He uses a rousing tune to engage
listeners, while the strong and simple D
G chord structure allows the performer
to concentrate on his job of putting his
story across, without the distraction of
complicated guitar chord sequences.
