They’d passed through the heads and into the great mouth of the harbour that was still like the wild sea, an enormous expanse of water fringed by rough-hewn sandstone cliffs and densely wooded hills of dry, dull green. A blustery wind threw sprays of foam and snapped the Guildford’s sails, leaned the mast; the timbers creaked and stretched, the ship reached up tall and carved the water with gleeful lunges of its bow. The sky was immense and swept clean, the palest, perfect blue.

Claus von Rolt shielded his eyes with the flat of his hand. Gulls swooped the hull, sleek and white, their harsh cries hungry.

The Guildford dropped anchor at ten o’clock in the morning. It was a Saturday. Passengers and most of the 73rd Regiment were disembarked first, while the convicts remained shackled below. Claus von Rolt could hear them underfoot as he crossed the deck, their chains dragging, the sound cold and woeful.

Sydney Cove was busy with construction: windmills and new stone docks, warehouses and trade buildings, barracks and roads. Rolt saw wagon carts loaded with quarried stone and surveyors at every corner, convicts labouring with picks and shovels, soldiers standing guard. Out past the clearings and towards the trees, small groups of blacks sat around smoky fires. The men were lean and tall, the women heavy-breasted, their laughing children running and playing in the sandy dirt.

He found lodgings on Bridge Street and spent his first night in the Antipodes listening to drunks outside his window. In the morning, he enquired about passage to the South Pacific and was told to ask at the docks, down where the whaling ships came in.

The captains were already in the taverns. They took a cup of rum when Rolt pulled out a coin and paid, but shook their heads at his request.

‘It’s the southern seas we ply, man, don’t be daft. It’s a working ship!’

They were coarse, bearded men, hands clawed, dry as brick, made stiff by hemp rope and harpoon, and with the fish stench of dead whale in their salty clothes. They looked at Rolt’s fine tailoring and smiled.

‘You’d get yourself all wet!’

They all said no.

An American whaler anchored in the late afternoon and Rolt went down to the dock again, still hopeful. The first man he saw come off the New Bedford wore a shrunken head around his neck. He was Māori. Rolt approached and spoke to him and the Māori pointed out his captain. Claus von Rolt offered double the money for passage.

‘New Zealand’s a way and the waters ain’t pleasant,’ the captain said.

‘I’ve sea legs,’ Rolt said, watching the barefoot Māori walk off with his crewmates.

‘Well, good then. You’ll need ’em. And I’ll have the fare in advance.’

LETTERS