John Clark Lidiard (1789-1876): The Early Years

John Clard Lidiard
Wallace Early Settlers Museum

John Clark Lidiard was one of New Zealand’s earliest pioneers, one whose success and longevity were due to his learning early in life how to cope with hardship.

Lidiard’s early life began in the port town of Deptford in England where he was born in 1789.  Deptford at that time was a prosperous Royal Navy Dockyard shipbuilding town—building, victualling and repairing the wooden warships of the Napoleonic wars.

John’s father, James Lidiard, was a seaman but little else is known of him. It is likely he was pressed into service for the navy and spent most of his time at sea, leaving his wife, Anne, to raise their son as best she could.

The Marine Society may have provided John an opportunity to be educated as we know that he was both proficient at reading and writing, unusual for many seamen at that time. And through the Society it is probable that John, like many young boys, volunteered for a life at sea to serve out his apprenticeship, to further his education and to earn a living.

John was 11 when he first went to sea during the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. He probably started as a ship’s boy and it is possible that he sailed into battle on HMS Blanche. The Blanche was a warship, built and manned in Deptford in November 1800, that sailed to join Sir Hyde-Parker’s fleet in Yarmouth bound for the Baltic.

John Lidiard’s naval career lasted for 16 years until the end of the Napoleonic Wars. And because of his early start at sea, John would have developed both skill and agility in performing his duties as a Jack Tar, capabilities that would hold him in good stead.

 Captain of the Maintop

 By his own account, John Clark Lidiard was at the Blockade of Boston (1812) aboard the HMS Majestic, a 74-gun ship-of-the-line. 

By this time Lidiard was Captain of the Maintop, a position both of responsibility and respect requiring the seaman to perform skilled and challenging work at the top of the rigging—regardless of  sailing conditions.

In January 1815, HMS Majestic, which had recently  been razeed down to a 58-gun flagship under Capt. John Hayes, was one of several British ships to pursue and challenge the USS President.

HMS Belleraphon

Not long after returning to England, Lidiard transferred to HMS Bellerophon (aka ‘Billy Ruff’n’). She was a 74-gun ship-of-the-line that saw action at the Glorious First of June, the Battle of the Nile, and the Battle of Trafalgar.  John was apparently aboard her later in 1815 when she took on her most famous passenger—Napoleon Bonaparte—and escorted him to Portsmouth.

With Napoleon in custody the war with France was finally over and the crew of HMS Bellerophon was paid off. John Clark Lidiard probably returned home looking for work but to no avail. With hundreds of thousands of sailors and soldiers returning home, there just weren’t enough jobs for them to fill.

From Sailor to Whaler

With the war over and his career in the Royal Navy at an end, Lidiard’s prospects of work in England were not promising. He was a seaman, an excellent one at that, and it made good sense for a seaman to stick with what he was good at. So Lidiard sought a new career at sea—he went whaling.

On August 11, 1817 John Clark Lidiard left England on the whaler Indian under Captain William Swain and set sail for the other side of the world. After eight months at sea, the Indian arrived in the Bay of Islands in April 1818 along with another whaler, Foxhound.

From the Bay of Islands the Indian sailed for Sydney Cove where she was to deliver a cargo of Porter’s Ale, slop clothing and soap.   After a month in Sydney Cove,  Indian left for the Southern fisheries.

  

Lidiard returned home to England in July 1819 after nearly two years at sea hunting whales.  He had successfully made the transition from jack tar  to whaler. Whether he knew it or not then, his fortunes had changed and this would be his last trip home to England.

Pakeha-Maori in the Bay of Islands

It was aboard the whaling ship Vansittart under the command of Capt. Thomas Hunt, which left England in January 1820, that John returned to the Bay of Islands accompanied by shipmates Thomas Davis, James Sawyer, and Luke Wade from Indian. John was a boat steerer (see later article) for the Vansittart which made several trips to the Bay of Islands in early 1821. 
  

In May of that year, after a falling out with the chief mate William Whippy,  Lidiard and Luke Wade jumped ship and, as the only white men on land at that time, came under the protection and jurisdiction of the local Ngati Manu chief Pomare.

Pomare was an astute leader and recognized the value to having Pakeha residents in his community. He was keen for trade and cultivated potatoes and kumara for that purpose. He wanted muskets and gun-powder and by using Pakeha members of the community as negotiators, he was able to secure weapons in good working order.

These men that came to live in the community were known as Pakeha-Maori. Though his friend Luke Wade joined the Wesleyan Mission station at Whangaroa about 2 years after jumping ship, Lidiard stayed at Kororareka, and lived as the Maori lived, possibly taking a Maori wife.

'Kororareka' painting by Augustus Earle;
the colour print was published in 1938.

We know that John Clark Lidiard stayed at Kororareka for at least six years. While we have little evidence of his activities at that time, we do know that he was there in January of 1827 as he left us a personal account of the part he played during the recapture of the brig that had been taken by prisoners.

Read more about John and life in New Zealand in my next blog: ‘Claims of an Old New Zealander’.