The Story of Henry Winkelmann and Harold Willey Hudson on Jarvis Island

From: Winkelmann: Images of Early New Zealand (1987) by Vivien Edwards Benton Ross Publishers (Auckland)

Henry Winkelmann was born in Yorkshire on 26 September 1860. He arrived in New Zealand in October 1878, where he lived an interesting and varied life, taking up photography as a career when he was nearly forty.

Winkelmann began his photographic career in 1892, after surviving an extraordinary eight month stranding on the remote Jarvis Island.

He was then unemployed and was offered a position to go on a schooner to claim an uninhabited Pacific island that was considered valuable because of its guano. At first common sense prevailed and Winkelmann decided it was too risky. But after discussing it with a fellow boarder, Harold Willey Hudson, the two decided to take on the challenge together.

They signed an agreement that they would proceed to the island and claim ownership in the name of Thomas Henderson junior of the Henderson and MacFarlane Shipping Company. Passage and provisions would be provided, and the salary, payable on return, was £2 10s per month spent on the island. They were to stay a minimum of three months, a maximum of five; and attempts at dispossession would have to be resisted. Hudson owned a .38 Colt revolver, and Winkelmann was given a firearm Hudson considered more dangerous to the user than to any potential target.

The story of their adventure was recorded separately by both men. Neither version contradicts the other, though each judged certain aspects of more importance and at times viewed the situation from a different perspective.

They left Auckland aboard the seventeen-ton schooner Sunbeam on 8 June 1881. In order to prevent other Auckland traders knowing what they were about, their advertised destination was given as the Kingsmill (Gilbert) Islands. On board were five crew and three passengers: Winkelmann, Hudson, and Miss Bruce's dog Taipo (along for the ride because he chased the boarding house cat, and Miss Bruce hadn't paid his licence fee).

Hudson describes Winkelmann as able-bodied, musical and mechanical, but no boatman, and the only man on board more than five feet six inches tall.

The Sunbeam had once been sunk off Motutapu Island in the Hauraki Gulf. Henderson later bought her and had her refitted. She turned out to be leaky and often required pumping out at two-hour intervals.

The crew slept in the main cabin but, to accommodate Winkelmann and Hudson, planks were removed inside and they dossed down on trays over the shingle ballast. Taipo was banned because of his fleas, and he spent a miserable existence in the anchor locker amongst the chains.

At the start of the voyage the crew had discovered an iron dowel in the woodwork which affected the compass, and had sawn it out. A nor'easter kept them at Kawau Island three days then, off the Watchman (Channel Island) at the end of the Coromandel Peninsula, Winkelmann observed a comet during an eclipse [this was the total lunar eclipse of 11 June 1881, also observed by American astronomer Asaph Hall – including the observation of a “nebulosity” sjh].

Once past Cuvier Island sealed orders were opened which revealed their exact destination: Jarvis Island, 0° 22' S 159° 54' W (present-day charting gives the co-ordinates as 0° 23' S 160° 02' W).

A stove on deck worked well when weather permitted, but the fare was mainly salt horse (corned beef), ship's biscuit and an occasional jam roly-poly. Sometimes there was fresh fish; they caught dolphins, and a shark was finally killed with Hudson's revolver.

The journey was long and fraught with danger. They faced storms from every quarter, and mountainous and confused seas. Hudson was continually seasick and, by the time they reached Penrhyn, forty-three days after leaving, to pick up stores, he had lost a stone and a half in weight.

At Penrhyn Island they stayed with a Mr Hird, who was Henderson and MacFarlane's agent. He owned a harmonium and with the household they spent some rowdy evenings. The crew were entertained by the local traders to the extent that the skipper was so drunk he was assumed dead. Serious discussion had taken place on how to dispose of his body before a brief flicker of life was observed. Before leaving Penrhyn, Winkelmann gave Taipo away in return for a volume of Shakespeare and some American literature. Three natives experienced in surf work were taken on board.

On 2 August 1881 Jarvis Island was sighted. Hudson described it as like an upside-down saucer, with the island being the central part and the reef the perimeter. It was small; about one and a half miles long and a mile wide, and only twelve feet above sea level. There were no trees; just white coral, and the remains from the American Guano Company; ten tumbledown buildings, 8,000 tons of guano and three graves.

They explored the island and removed a foreign flag, finding evidence of recent ownership, where a native had been in charge but had left the island because of sickness. A notice stated he would be back. They made their own declaration, signed it and hoisted the British flag.

Winkelmann and Hudson stayed on the Sunbeam overnight, and next morning landed stores: flour, rice, sugar, and a variety of tins, including milk, beef and mutton. There was no water on the island, and the skipper left a cask, promising to return with more. They never saw him again.

The night before, Winkelmann had had second thoughts about being left, but now with the ship gone he and Hudson were faced with having to proceed with the arrangement.

They made their quarters in what had been the superintendent's house, which was least affected by dry rot. Their stores they supplemented with turtle, crabs and fish from the reef, at times braving sharks which visited the lagoon. Winkelmann built a wooden stage off the beach from which to fish, and twice it was washed away. When the birds nested eggs were plentiful, and by coating them with egg-white and burying them, they were preserved for out-of-season use.

The rains which fell infrequently were piped from the roof into barrels and, although this water supply was flavoured by guano, their lives depended on it. Using oil cans, a bamboo fishing rod and tins for solder, they erected stills to provide clean drinking water. A horse found wandering on the island eventually died, and a shin bone became a pipe for the still.

Hudson made a handle for a hammer and several useful articles, such as a tray and knifeboard. Winkelmann fashioned sandals from oak staves to protect his feet, and a hat from an old sugar mat. A long length of plaited material, which was probably the basis of this hat, has survived, coiled up in a box.

With no musical instruments and his only means of artistic expression the making of necessities, Winkelmann turned to sketching. He had produced a drawing at Penrhyn, but now he turned to the buildings of Jarvis Island for subjects. His sketches are probably the only records that those houses ever existed, for when the Amaranth was shipwrecked there in 1913 there was no trace of them.

Although both men kept busy, it was not long before they came into conflict; an animosity aggravated by the climate, isolation, different temperaments and poor nourishment.

Winkelmann mentions little in his writings of his island companion, and when he did it was using the formal term of `Mr Hudson'. His companion, however, writing in ink made from turtle gall, gun powder and gum, made frequent accusations: `Winkelmann stole the raisins', or `Winkelmann stole the milk', `He took my tins for solder', and `Sulked when I locked up my tools'. The missing food was attributed by Winkelmann himself to the wild cats, which `prowl the houses and rooves at night, holding musical evenings and stealing anything'.

Hudson records that on one occasion the pair resorted to physical blows. His thumb was injured (it later had to be lanced), and Winkelmann was laid low with a headache.

Winkelmann's twenty-first birthday was one of the gloomiest days of his life. A month later, towards the end of October, they saw a British warship. A boat was lowered but, believing the two on the island to be natives, the boat's crew turned back and the ship sailed away. With the `castaways' long hair, their bodies burned mahogany, and Winkelmann's custom of wearing a pareu, the mistake was understandable.

Although the pair had found a dug-out canoe, Hudson decided to build a bigger boat in which to escape. He used pitch-pine sarking boards from a collapsed roof, but when boiling pine chips for tar he accidentally spilled the hot liquid over himself. His burns healed, bar one on his foot, which ate away and exposed the bone. With no dressings his wound was open to flies.

Christmas was celebrated with a toast drunk in weak tea flavoured by guano. The period of five months maximum occupation came and went and the pair began to suffer from deep depression and despair. By March their stores were nearly gone. Meals consisted of fish, condensed water and a pancake made from birds' eggs and weevil-infested flour. Winkelmann hadn't quite lost his sense of humour — he recorded that the pancakes behaved `obstinately' in the pan.

On 23 March 1882, nearly eight months after their arrival on the island, they woke to see a vessel. She turned out to be the brigantine Borealis, chartered by Henderson. A boat was launched and they were rescued, with Hudson getting his injured foot trodden on in the process.

Before leaving the island, the ship tried to load up with guano, but she could not anchor to the sea's bottom. A man named Squire Flockton was left behind to retain ownership. Hudson gave him his revolver and months later, deranged and full of gin, he shot and killed himself. Such was the effect of Jarvis Island.

Winkelmann, it turns out, was lucky to be rescued in more ways than one; for the story goes that Hudson told someone that if they hadn't been saved and the stores had run out, then Winkelmann would have been next to be eaten.

During the voyage home Winkelmann took the ship's latitude and longitude every day and sketched an explanatory diagram of a device natives on the ship used for drilling a hole in pearl shell in order to make an artificial bait to catch bonito. At Savage Island (Niue), he was delighted to find a harmonium and piano, owned by Mr Nicholas, who was Henderson and MacFarlane's agent. The ship took on fruit and vegetables, and it is easy to visualise Winkelmann and Hudson, their chins dripping coconut milk and mouths stuffed with bananas until their stomachs retaliated after eight months of deprivation.

When the ship sailed Winkelmann, with a few personal possessions, found his fishing tackle, candles and a towel missing. After the ship docked in Auckland they visited Henderson, who was surprised to see them alive but paid them their wages and not a penny more, in spite of their dreadful experiences.

Hudson went on to considerable achievements in his life, eventually becoming managing director of L. D. Nathan Ltd, and chairman of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce. He was a founder member and commodore of the St George's Rowing Club.

He spent the next ten years working as a clerk for the Bank of New Zealand. He then began work as a photographer, supplementing his income by continuing to work for the Bank until 1895 when he left to farm Great Barrier Island. By 1901 he was well established as a photographer, setting up a studio in Victoria Arcade.  Renowned and awarded, both at home and overseas, for his marine photography, Winkelmann photographed a wide variety of subjects including scenes from all over New Zealand.