The seven ‘empty’ graves of Jed River Cemetery
The last in the series ‘The spaces that shape us’ which looks at the history that connects us to Hurunui’s reserves.
At the end of a short walk from Gore Bay beach lies an old burial ground said to contain seven unmarked graves for seven indentured labourers who drowned in the nearby port in 1866.
Credible sources, however, are raising questions on what mystery the graves conceal.
Cheviot Historical Records Society member Kenneth Sloss says the popular story of Ni-Vanuatu (Vanuatuan) boatmen being drowned at Gore Bay and buried in the Jed River Cemetery, is “false and not supported by any reliable evidence”.
To unravel the legend, we need to go back in time.
At the close of the 19th century, Port Robinson had a history as a “tricky port” for sailing ships and a “wild” harbour for other craft. Lying between the Hurunui and Waiau rivers, it was exposed to the northeasterly winds. With no wharf, ships had to anchor a mile off-shore.
A slipway was built in 1879 by wealthy landowner William “Ready Money’ Robinson and extended around 200 yards into the sea. Surfboats would go out to the ships and return heavily laden, with scare room for the workmen, to be pulled up the slipway by a 20 horsepower steam-driven winch.
While not ideal, Port Robinson provided the only sea access to the area. All building and other material had to come in by ship, and all that was produced on the surrounding farms had to go out by ship. Lines of drays and wagons would wait their turn.
For the workmen working to load and offload the cargo, the pressure was intense.
Shipwrecks and death were never far away. When a breaker capsized a waiting boat on July 7, 1860, drowning two men, the dismal need for a burial ground began to be realised. The first recorded burial took place in 1864, with ‘Jed Cemetery’ gazetted in 1893.
In Hurunui District Council’s draft Reserves Management Plan, the Jed Cemetery Reserve is listed as having “strong local historical significance as a number of people buried there were Ni-Vanuatu who were forcibly transported to work in the Queensland cane fields. These workers lost their lives through drowning while loading and unloading ships from surfboats.”
This story says Sloss, is false. “The myth is entirely based on the opinion of a young boy”.
Norma Walls-Hazelhurst, the first archivist at the Cheviot Museum, also placed doubt on this story in The History of Jed Cemetery Cheviot, compiled in the 1960s.
“About a popular legend of six kanakas being drowned taking a surf boat out to a waiting vessel at Gore Bay,” she wrote, “Mr A. Tweedie said he remembered [as a young boy] six pegs marking the plots at the Jed Cemetery.”
There is no doubt that the six boatmen went into the water. In her research Walls-Hazelhurst pointed to an entry from the Cheviot Hills Diaries 1866, kept for the farm Cheviot Hills, which reported the movement of six “Kanakas going to the beach”. In an entry made on October 21, 1866:
“The same working at the beach as yesterday. They began work first thing in the morning. As the men came in with the last load they shipped some water at the outer breakers. She filled with and went down. As she was loaded with iron she sank like a stone. The Kanakas swam to the shore. As it was high tide at the time she was not so far out as first appeared. We waited for low water before we attempted to do any thing with it. We got all of the iron out of her. One side of the boat is badly broken, I think she can be repaired.”
“So,” wrote Walls-Hazelhurst in History of the Jed Cemetery Cheviot County, “we have to assume that a legend built up around the story but in fact no Kanakas drowned in reality. Certainly, if there had been such a fatality, it would have been recorded in the district and probably an inquest … The pegs seen bv Mr Tweedie must have marked some other feature, perhaps a fenceline.”
“In my opinion,” says Sloss, “there is no evidence that six Kanakas were buried in the Jed River Cemetery.”
Sloss also refers to the book Cheviot Kingdom to County by John Wilson: “At least six Kanakas were employed as boatman on 21 October 1866, when a boat went down and the six Kanakas aboard swam ashore.” Sloss also says it is his belief that the boatmen may have been Māori, Hawaiians or Melanesians – natives of the Melanesian Islands.
We invite you to visit the Jed River Cemetery to peer behind the veil of the past and determine for yourself the truth about the seven ‘empty’ graves of Jed River Cemetery.
You can download a copy of the Hurunui Council’s draft Reserves Management Plan to give your feedback from www.hurunui.govt.nz/have-your-say/consultations Feedback closes on 23 May 2024.
*Thanks to the Cheviot Museum for access to archival material and to Kenneth Sloss for providing information.