FMIB 50805 Port Ross, with Provision-Depot

Port Ross is a natural harbour on Auckland Island in the Auckland Islands Group, a subantarctic chain that forms part of the

New Zealand Outlying Islands The New Zealand outlying islands are nine offshore island groups that are part of New Zealand, with all but Solander Islands lying beyond the 12nm limit of the mainland's territorial waters. Although considered an integral parts of New Zealand, ...

. Guarding the mouth of Port Ross are Rose Island, Enderby Island,

Ewing Island Ewing Island is an ice-covered, dome-shaped island in diameter, lying northeast of Cape Collier, off the east coast of Palmer Land. It was discovered from the air on November 7, 1947, by the Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition (RARE), under ...

, and the tiny Ocean Island. The harbour is the most well-established congregation ground for

southern right whale The southern right whale (''Eubalaena australis'') is a baleen whale, one of three species classified as right whales belonging to the genus ''Eubalaena''. Southern right whales inhabit oceans south of the Equator, between the latitudes of 20 ...

s in New Zealand waters. In 1842, members of the

Ngāti Mutunga Ngāti Mutunga is a Māori iwi (tribe) of New Zealand, whose original tribal lands were in north Taranaki. They migrated from Taranaki, first to Wellington (with Ngāti Toa and other Taranaki Hāpu), and then to the Chatham Islands (along wit ...

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the Co ...

arrived in Port Ross from the

Chatham Islands The Chatham Islands ( ) (Moriori: ''Rēkohu'', 'Misty Sun'; mi, Wharekauri) are an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about east of New Zealand's South Island. They are administered as part of New Zealand. The archipelago consists of about t ...

with Moriori slaves in an attempt to establish a settlement.Peat, Neville (2003) Subantarctic New Zealand: A Rare Heritage, Invercargill: Department of Conservation, , p. 75 In the late 1840s, an

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled peopl ...

and

whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industr ...

community set up in Erebus Cove, on the harbour, and named Hardwicke. Due to the inhospitable climate, the settlement was abandoned within three years. A cemetery remains, later used to bury victims of shipwrecks. Survivors of the 1866 wreck of the '' General Grant'' set up a camp in the harbour, where they lived for 18 months before rescue. Later,

castaway depot A castaway depot is a store or hut placed on an isolated island to provide emergency supplies and relief for castaways and victims of shipwrecks. A string of depots were built by the New Zealand government on their subantarctic islands in the ...

s were established in Port Ross to provide succour for any sailors wrecked or marooned on the islands. In 1887 it provided relief for the survivors of the '' Derry Castle''. It was also one of three sites occupied by the wartime Cape Expedition coastwatching stations established on New Zealand's subantarctic islands.

References

Landforms of the Auckland Islands Ghost towns in New Zealand Former populated places in New Zealand History of the New Zealand outlying islands 1842 establishments in New Zealand {{OutlyingNZ-geo-stub

See also

References