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. Guarding the mouth of Port Ross are Rose Island,

Enderby Island Enderby Island is part of New Zealand's uninhabited Auckland Islands archipelago, south of mainland New Zealand. It is situated just off the northern tip of Auckland Island, the largest island in the archipelago. Geography and geology Enderby ...

, Ewing Island, 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, first to Wellington (with Ngāti Toa and other Taranaki hapū), and then to the Chatham Islands (along with Ngāti Tama) ...

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 language, Moriori: , 'Misty Sun'; ) are an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about east of New Zealand's South Island, administered as part of New Zealand, and consisting of about 10 islands within an approxima ...

with

Moriori The Moriori are the first settlers of the Chatham Islands ( in Moriori language, Moriori; in Māori language, Māori). Moriori are Polynesians who came from the New Zealand mainland around 1500 AD, which was close to the time of the ...

slaves in an attempt to establish a settlement.Murihiku timeline
(Abandoned website)

at the

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Launched for public access in 2001, the service allows users to go "back in ...

.Peat, Neville (2003) Subantarctic New Zealand: A Rare Heritage, Invercargill: Department of Conservation, , p. 75 In the late 1840s, an

agricultural Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created f ...

and

whaling Whaling is the hunting of whales for their products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that was important in the Industrial Revolution. Whaling was practiced as an organized industry as early as 875 AD. By the 16t ...

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 New Zealand Subantarctic Islands, t ...

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