1860: Victorian Navy Deployed to New Zealand

December 29, 2022

By AHNZ

Today in New Zealand history, 29 December, 1860, the Victorians came over to help fight the Maori Wars. They would invade in even greater numbers once they found out about our gold! This one ship, HMVS Victoria, was making Colonial history as well as New Zealand history. Initially a warship belonging to the Victoria Police Department it was legislatively transferred by the Victorian Parliament into being a Victorian Government warship. The  Victorian Navy had been created!

It’s a lesson in how governments take things over and centralise power. No doubt the excuse was the urgency of the crisis in New Zealand of the Taranaki War and the importance of helping out Victoria’s neighboring State across the Tasman.

This one-ship navy was a big help to New Zealand Premier Edward Stafford who by this time had deposed Governor Gore Brown. It was probably also helpful, if expensive, to Victorian Premier William Nicholson whose parliament passed The Armed Vessels Regulation Act¹. Having a commandeered warship at your command must impress the voter very much and have put Nicholson in a position to dispense lots of useful favors. Ref. 1858: Parliament Supreme, AHNZ

It must make you wonder what the quid pro quo was for Nicholson helping Stafford. Perhaps not too much since by December 1860 the new Victorian Premier was Richard Heales but there would be a considerable lag before Heales could get his hands on all the strings of power. Both Nicholson and Stafford were famous for working for and achieving the institution of the Secret Ballot in their respective States. It means nobody else gets to know how you vote in elections unless you tell them. The ethic behind an Open Ballot is that it’s good in a stakeholder democracy for the public to know what each voter is up to. Nicholson and Stafford, in moving us to the Secret Ballot, were changing the nature of democracy to be less individual and more collectivist and political party-controlled. No wonder a couple of realpolitik statesmen such as Stafford and Nicholson could cut a deal.

Stafford was also facing the General Election of 1860 (12 December 1860 – 28 March 1861) during this time. Being able to pull in an Australian warship that was of great use showed the voter that Stafford was doing a good job with the war. He kept his majority.

“On this day, 29th December 1860, sailors from the Victorian Colonial warship, Victoria, take part in the action at Matarikoriko, New Zealand. The Victoria’s service in New Zealand waters during the second Anglo-Maori war represents the first overseas military operation by an Australian unit, the beginning of Australia’s overseas war history.” – Remembering the Past Australia, Facebook (2020)

“The Victorian Parliament passed “The Armed Vessels Regulation Act” which regularized the position of Her Majesty’s Victorian Ship VICTORIA and her crew in war and which effectively created the Victorian Navy, the first in the colonies. The law officers of the Crown in Britain and a horrified British Government were quick to disallow the Act, seeing it as leading to a most undesirable independence on the part of a mere colony. ” – Naval Historical Society of Australia

“In addition, when the Victorian government passed the Armed Vessels Regulation Act, as a matter of urgency, the imperial government concluded that it was legally impossible for a colonial legislature to pass such a law, particularly where it sought to establish extra-territorial validity. The Duke of Newcastle was hostile towards any perceived attempt to establish a colonial navy, citing fears about eventual separatism.” – Batt (2014)

“The University of Melbourne was founded the same year as the “Victoria” was launched, and, when Constance Talbot christened the vessel on 30th June 1855, no one predicted that within six years the vessel and her crew would go to war. As the mahogany hull, housing her specially designed steam engines, slid down the slip at Limehouse, in London, her builders Messrs Young, Son and Magney had every reason to accept the congratulations of the experts.” – Frank Glen (1982)

“On 19 April 1860, Victoria sailed to Hobart, embarked 134 troops from the 40th Regiment of Foot, and transported them to New Zealand…After delivering the soldiers to Auckland, Victoria performed shore bombardments and coastal patrols, while maintaining supply routes between Auckland and New Plymouth. In July, she sailed to Sydney to transport General Thomas Pratt and his staff to New Zealand. Victoria was used to evacuate women and children from the town of New Plymouth, following Maori attacks on the town’s fortifications. ” – Wiki

“I, for one, have always said that I looked to the time when there would be in this country one Government and one Legislature.” – Stafford

The legal ambiguity allowing Victoria to have its own navy was not resolved until 1865. Initially London was horrified that the colonies had already begun creating their own, international mind you, navy! Yet this sort of break-away independent New Zealand was always the agenda of men like Stafford. He took power alike from New Zealanders and from the Empire and gave it to his own regime. In 1856 Stafford made the Governor’s role in the Ministry Ministry merely symbolic and started holding Executive meetings in a private cabinet without the Governor present. In mid-1858 Stafford’s Waste Lands Act and Disallowance of Provincial Laws gave him the power to veto whatever he liked that the Provinces tried to legislate.

As Batt (2014) points out, London was wary of Stafford’s power grab and concerned about our Colonial Government’s mismanagement of internal policies. Our State had started a war in Taranaki and to fight it simply called in the Imperial Government as the ‘hired muscle’ to come and sort the Maoris out. If they wouldn’t do it then the Tasman colonies had now demonstrated that they could have their own Colonial Navy. It’s hard to know which prospect distressed the Empire the most!

The State in New Zealand was growing more powerful in a short amount of time. Stafford was the great catalyst. HMVS Victoria and the creation of the colonial navy was a key moment in the ever-growing and ever-centralising New Zealand State.

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1. Ref. An Act to provide for the better regulation and discipline of Armed Vessels in the service of Her Majesty’s Local Government in Victoria, Australasian Legal Information Institute

Image ref. Victoria at sea, State Library of Victoria, navy.gov.au

Image ref. Stafford. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 5-2736N; modified by AHNZ

Ref. A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department 1835-1885,  Micah Batt (2014,) UNSW

Ref. For glory and a farm : the story of Australia’s involvement in the New Zealand wars of 1860-66. Frank Glen. Abridged. Journals of the NZ Military Historical Society (1982/83); Digger History

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