Ripapa Island #2 - the Maori prisoners

In my first post on Ripapa Island I wrote about its early history as a Ngati Mamoe and Ngai Tahu pa and then, briefly, as a quarantine station, purpose-built to accommodate over 300 immigrants. When the more spacious Quail Island (Otamatata) was officially designated a quarantine station in 1875, Ripapa continued to accommodate any overflow of immigrants, but its newly-built barracks were largely devoid of purpose. Until the government found a use.

 Quarantine Island, Port Lyttelton. 1880s/1890s by Mary Catherine Medley, Alexander Turnbull Library.
The  Ripapa  Island quarantine station included barracks, hospital, service buildings, a barrack master’s cottage and a jetty. What is not visible in this sketch is the jetty.

  

In 1880 the people of Parihaka in Taranaki, led by Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi, mounted a campaign of passive resistance to the large-scale consfication of their land. Arrested without trial, approximately 400 men were transported far from home to jails in the South Island - Dunedin, Hokitika and Christchurch. Those in Christchurch were imprisoned in the Addington and Lyttelton jails. Approximately 160 of the Parihaka Maori were eventually shipped on the SS Hinemoa from Lyttelton to Ripapa Island where they were held for six months.

Sketch of Te Whiti-o-Rongomai, made by W. F. R. Gordon during a hui at Parihaka in 1880. 

Alexander Turnbull Library

Reporting on the arrival in Lyttelton of one group of 26 prisoners, the Lyttelton Times described them as ‘chiefly young, powerful-looking men [who] do not seem to have lost their faith in Te Whiti through their arrest and confinement.’[1] Clearly the presence of the Parihaka men in a province whose Maori population was comparatively small, created quite a stir. “An immense crowd congregated on the wharf, all eager to see the Maoris land, the wagons being used as grand stands.”[2] Such was the curiosity that the harbour launches ran special trips down the harbour, past Ripapa Island in the expectation of sighting the prisoners. In 1881 Te Whiti and Tohu were incarcerated in the Addington jail but never on Ripapa Island - as has sometimes been suggested.

The spectacle was short lived. The men returned to Parihaka having served their 'sentence'. By 31 March 1881 the Lyttelton Times was reporting that “the Quarantine Station at Ripa Island has been undergoing a thorough renovation after the removal of the Maori prisoners for whose accommodation it had to be considerably altered.”[3] 

So by 1880 the jetty on Ripapa Island had acted as a landing stage for two reluctant groups -  immigrants in quarantine and Maori prisoners from Parihaka. Both groups would have been relieved to depart the island.

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[1] Lyttelton Times, 28 July 1880. Other newspaper reports were much more disparaging.

[2] Ibid

[3] Lyttelton Times, 31 March 1881

[1] Star, 25 September 1880

[2] Star, 6 November 1880