Joel Polack, 4 Polack’s Store
Despite the difficulties confronting him in the frontier society, Joel Polack set up his store on the beach of Kororareka, soon to be the centre of European settlement. He arrived with no capital. His brother provided the merchandise and the credit. Joel wrote to his brother Abraham on 16th December 1834, well over a year after he bought his land in Kororareka:
‘I have to acknowledge with many thanks the receipt of the goods mentioned in your invoice dated 14 Nov. …. Now brother you will perceive by the enclosed remittance I can do well if I had only encouragement. And as I know you can get 12 & 18 mo: credit — do stretch a point and get me the following articles per 1st opportunity so that I may compete with the others — I do not forget my old debt to you — so do give me the opportunity of doing something try and send me therefore the following articles.’
Here he listed the goods that he wanted: wine, rum, port, beer, and corks. He also wanted good blankets, shirts Guernsey frocks, printed fabric, and raisins, cheese, soap, sugar, but no tea (!). He asked for a few fowling pieces and three double barrelled pieces, but not percussion and nothing fine. Finally he wanted a box of trifles such as small looking glasses in little black frames, common scissors, flints and steels, teapots or any other trifles for natives, large bowl pipes, beads and packs of cards. He gave clear instructions to his brother about the maximum prices he should pay. ‘My principal support is you buying at Auction Sales’, he wrote, ‘- Do not forget GOVERNMENT sales by Auction. … You cannot send too many slops [i.e. articles of clothing and bedding issued or sold to sailors] as 5 Whalers fit out here in 2 months for England — & 30 for the fishing.’
He told his brother how to ship these goods. ‘1st get all measured by SIZE & not by WEIGHT, 2nd to pay the Freight in Sydney & to fill hollow goods up.’ Clearly overheads had to be contained to be competitive.
Joel Polack, the restless adventurer, seemed to be ready to settle down. He asked his brother if he knew of a ‘Steady — moral respectable — sober young man — willing to forego Sydney luxuries for plain pork & potatoes’ to assist him & live as a companion. He was prepared to pay £20 and more as the business improved. He also wanted ‘a companion in the shape of a good wife — accomplished as a housewife & calculated to make a man comfortable’ He could do with a little cash [by way of a dowry], but could also go without that. He had the 17-year-old daughter of Solomon’s of Hobart Town in mind1. To find a Jewish wife in the colonies you had to cast your net wide. Clearly nothing came of this proposal.
In a letter written three weeks later, on 7th January 1835 Joel Polack told his brother that things were looking up. He was paying invoices for some of the goods he had received. He was also pleased that the master of the ship, “Charles of London” had appointed him as his agent and recommended him to masters of other vessels.
He noted that some of the prices Abraham had paid for merchandise were too high, the soldiers’ coats were moth eaten, the pitch tar rosin too dear and could only be sold on commission at cost plus freight, the rum was the worst in the bay, but the soap and sugar were very cheap and good. He also listed further goods he wanted; more rum, wine, port and bottles and corks, more clothing, blankets, trifles, but this time he also ordered linseed oil, turpentine, salad oil and pickles, violin strings, nails, window glass, spades and hoes, a reflection of the changing economy and needs of the Bay of Islands.
Joel’s main problem was however, that he could not transact business unless he had some person of ‘respectable manners’ to help him. Vessels sometimes anchored six miles from the shore and when he went to them there was no one to look after his house. He urgently needed a respectable young man of 20 to 28 who could go on board a vessel and transact business. He was sure that there were immigrants in Sydney who would jump at such an opportunity, and if Abraham knew of no one, Joel asked him to advertise for one.
It was not until two years later that Joel Polack managed to find such help, a young shipwright and carpenter, Dominick Ferari2, also known as Domenique Feraris, yet somehow, Polack still managed to leave his house and store and sail extensively around New Zealand, and in 1836 to leave for Australia for an extended period. Perhaps Thomas Spicer, who arrived in New Zealand in 1836 helped. He leased Polack’s business when Polack left the country the following year.3
Soon Kororareka was the most frequented resort for whalers in all the South Sea Islands; and its European population, although fluctuating, was then estimated at a thousand souls. It had a church, five hotels, numberless grog-shops, a theatre, several billiard tables, skittle alleys, finishes [sic], and hells [gambling houses].4 Polack realised that in such a place a brewery was bound to do well. In 1935 he built a brewery on his property. He transported most of the equipment from New South Wales. He also brought in the barley and hops and a brewer from Tasmania.5 Brewing beer locally set him at odds with the missionaries, who saw this as encouraging the natives to take to alcohol, though Polack saw the benefit of natives drinking beer rather than much stronger spirits. It also set him at odds with other traders and publicans, who considered this as a move to undercut them in a very lucrative part of their trade. Polack was not liked. Ormond Wilson, a writer who wrote about Kororareka, described how some of the Bay of Island settlers saw Polack. In contemporary accounts Polack is seen as somewhat pompous, despised by his fellow settlers. A letter to his brother in Sydney discloses his financially precarious situation, dependent for hope of profit in his operations on picking up goods cheaply and on long-term credit.6
Not withstanding the opinions of his neighbours, Polack prospered, and was one of the wealthiest people in New Zealand in the decade before colonisation. He quickly learned to speak and understand Maori and established good relations with them. It is evident from his writing that he treated them with respect, he was not judgemental, though found their ways occasionally amusing. He saw them as keen trading partners. As a trader and businessman, Polack was astute and innovative. If some of the other European traders accused him of sharp business practice,7 this should be seen in light of the practices of a community of settlers all on the make.
His neighbours, hardly honourable men, disputed the boundaries of his property and at times encroached on it8. A number of times he had occasion to call on Henry Williams, the leading missionary, equally respected by Maori and the Europeans settlers, to intervene in his disputes.
In New Zealand he had only two friends, he said, speaking at the enquiry of the Select Committee of the House of Lords, John Montefiore and Capt. Powditch9, who arrived on the same vessel as Polack in 1831, and was acting Postmaster. John Montefiore, like Polack, was a Jew, but a Jew from a greatly respected Jewish merchant family. Though there were four other Jews living in the Bay of Islands10 at the time, Polack did not regard them as friends. Nor did he consider Gilbert Mair or James Clendon, business associates at various times, as friends. Perhaps Polack was something of the snob. He was an educated man, almost certainly the most learned man at the time in New Zealand. He might have considered himself socially superior to other settlers. His writing suggests that he might have been somewhat supercilious, with a deprecating sense of humour. Yet his language, his use of unusual and at times inappropriate words, might also imply that he was somewhat insecure, pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Within a class-conscious community he was not quite a gentleman, not an army officer, a ship’s captain, a missionary, a man of God, who all had a certain status, not one from a family of gentry, or even the son of a wealthy distinguished mercantile family like the Montefiores. He was an artist, a writer, a footloose adventurer, who accumulated a modest fortune through his keen eye for business opportunities, and his fearless readiness to take risks in the face of the unknown. He did not fit the rough and ready, crude, unruly society of the small Bay of Island settlement.
Kororareka was a community composed of sailors of different nations, runaway and liberated convicts, traders, beach-combers, sawyers, and [native] New Zealanders, who could live together, either drunk or sober, without quarrelling, more particularly when revelry and brawling are what British sailors come on shore to enjoy. Disputes between white men and natives were often settled by the missionaries; quarrels confined to white men generally ended in combats which occasionally terminated in bloodshed.11 To maintain a sembalnce of law and order, and at times to meet out rough and ready justice, a vigilante group was formed that later was incorporated as the Kororareka Association. A sign of the violence that these men had to prepare for was that one of the rules of the newly formed Association was that ‘every member to provide himself with a good musket, a bayonet, a brace of pistols, a cutlass, and twenty rounds of ball cartridge.’12
Polack made enemies, and one of them was his neighbour, Ben Turner, ex-convict, who arrived at the Bay of Islands in 1826. He was described as ‘a publican or crimp to the shipping at Kororareka.’ He saw himeslf as the self-styled the ‘King of Kororareka’. He was a violent and boastful man. He was illiterate, on the the petition to the Crown by members of the Kororareka Association he signed his name with a cross. He ran a grog-shop.
Polack’s decision to open a grog shop met with harsh reaction, starting a brewery must have further antagonised his competitior. Indeed, his competitors, including Benjamin Turner, threatened to hang him and they even went further by making preparations to erect a gibbet for that purpose.
In March 1837, just after a return from a trip to Sydney, Polack challenged Turner to a duel. The cause was either Polack’s own ‘rascally bad’ temper, the dismal and deteriorating relationships with his grog competitors, or, possibly, a land squabble, followed by a quarrel with Turner and George Russell13. The duel that ensued hardly conformed to the customary rules. On the night of 10 March Polack was at home asleep when an intoxicated Turner, supposedly angered about a discrepancy in a bill (and possible cheating), banged on his door and demanded admittance. Polack shouted that he had best return at a decent hour. Turner, accompanied by John Evans, a pugilist, and a man called Steward, proceeded to smash the door down. Polack was prepared and after warning Turner to retreat, he fired his pistol, the ball striking Turner in the mouth. Polack was then bound and gagged and beaten up. He was dragged to the beach, where he was held while Turner’s wife, the sister of Hone Heke, kicked him. Polack’s cries of ‘Murder’ went unheeded, perhaps, because of the fear of a drunken Turner. He was rescued by the sailors on the barque Achilles that happened to be in the bay.
Next day Turner plundered Polack’s house. Polack complained to Busby, the British Resident, but Busby’s response was unhelpful. ‘My instructions do not extend to disputes among Europeans’, he replied.
It is understandable that after this assault, after this clear lack of sympathy on the part of the British official charged to ‘protect “well disposed settlers and traders”14 Polack felt that it was time to move on. He had made his fortune, he probably did not want to face further violent encounters, and he had learned that his father was ill. On 15 May 1837, some two months after Turner’s assault, he sailed to Sydney. There he published an article about his assailant without naming him, describing him as ‘a well-known runaway convict’ who had obtained his wealth through dubious means.
1 Auckland War memorial Museum Library Ref: MS 245, Folder 2
2 Goldman, L. M. (1958). The history of the Jews in New Zealand. Wellington, Reed.
3 Lee, J. (1983). ’I have named it the Bay of Islands — ’ Auckland, Hodder and Stoughton.
4 Thomson, A. S. (1859). The story of New Zealand : past and present — savage and civilized. London, J. Murray.
5 McLauchlan, G. (1994). The story of beer : beer and brewing, a New Zealand history. Auckland, Viking Penguin.
6 Wilson, O. (1990). Kororareka & other essays. Dunedin, John McIndoe.
7 Lee, p.196
8 NA OLC 638–42
9 COMMITTEES, H. O. C. P. R. O. (1837–38). Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords, appointed to inquire into the present state of the islands of New Zealand, and the expediency of regulating the settlement of British subjects therein; with the minutes of evidence taken before the committee, and index thereto
10 ibid
11Lee, p.196
12Lee, p.196, quoting Ben Turner in New Zealand Herald, Volume IV, Issue 976, 31 December 1866, P. 5 , THE EARLIEST LAWS OF NEW ZEALAND.
13ibid
14Te Ara, James Busby https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b54/busby-james
Chapter 5: Narrative of a Residence
https://stevensedley3.medium.com/joel-polack-an-outsider-in-pre-colonial-new-zealand-f436a3d70657
