Nicholl, the Prospector Who Discovered the Martha Lode at Waihi: His Life, Told Largely in His Own Words
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WILLIAM SHARMAN CRAWFORD (BILLY) NICHOLL, THE PROSPECTOR WHO DISCOVERED THE MARTHA LODE AT WAIHI: HIS LIFE, TOLD LARGELY IN HIS OWN WORDS Philip Hart Te Aroha Mining District Working Papers No. 57 2016 Historical Research Unit Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences The University of Waikato Private Bag 3105 Hamilton, New Zealand ISSN: 2463-6266 © 2016 Philip Hart Contact: [email protected] 1 WILLIAM SHARMAN CRAWFORD (BILLY) NICHOLL, THE PROSPECTOR WHO DISCOVERED THE MARTHA LODE AT WAIHI: HIS LIFE, TOLD LARGELY IN HIS OWN WORDS Abstract: Billy Nicholl was that rare miner, one who recorded his life. Born in Ireland, when still a boy he arrived in New Zealand in 1862. After his father died at an early age, he acquired a step-father, whom he disliked, with good reason; and in her later years his mother’s mind would fade. From 1868, when he was probably aged 14, until shortly before his death, he was a prospector and miner. Excited by the early Thames mining days, he learnt the skills needed to be a successful prospector, and during the 1870s worked with several mates on the Coromandel field, with some success. After briefly participating in the Te Aroha rush of 1880, he saw from the summit of that mountain the outcrops of the Waihi reefs, and turned his attention to that largely unexplored area. Although there was considerable claim and counter-claim about who first explored the area and who first found gold, Nicholl was the first to discover a payable lode, the famous Martha. After telling his mates of his discovery, they marked out the line of reef and started to develop several claims. For a time Nicholl was in charge of developing his find, and took a leading part in attempting for form a company to work the ground, succeeding on the third attempt. For a while he operated the first battery. But in time he lost control over his discovery and, far from profiting, lost a large amount of money. After leaving Waihi for Karangahake, he would be forced into bankruptcy in 1884. His first experience of overseas prospecting was in Fiji, where he found traces of gold but nothing payable. Returning to Waihi, he struggled to earn a living for his young family, taking contracts and owning a small farm to supplement his mining endeavours, notably at Maratoto in the 1890s. During that decade his wife abandoned him and their children, and to make his fortune – and because of the lure of another gold rush – he went to Klondike, where he had many exciting experiences but, being unable to mine there, returned poorer than before. In Nicholl’s last years he did some farming but his main interest continued to be prospecting, and he explored the Waitekauri area into his eighties until declining health forced him to desist. In his later years he 2 recorded details of his life, notably several versions of the discovery of the Martha lode, to the great benefit of posterity. RECORDING HIS LIFE William Sharman Crawford Nicholl, commonly known as ‘Billy’,1 mined on several goldfields, and became well known for his prospecting at Thames, Coromandel, Waihi, Maratoto, Whangamata, Waitekauri and, overseas, in Fiji and the Klondike. In 1928, when introducing an extract from his memoirs, the Auckland Star described him as ‘one of the best known mining men in the Dominion’.2 On his death, he was referred to in one obituary as ‘the best known and most experienced prospector in the North Island’.3 His reminiscences provide a much more detailed account of his life as a miner compared with what can be discovered about his contemporaries. ‘The Thames today and as it appeared sixty years ago when I landed on it six months after the field was opened. I was then sixteen years old’.4 These first two sentences of Nicholl’s 1927 memoirs referred to his arrival at the Thames goldfield in 1868. He had written two earlier accounts. In 1901 he was ‘compelled to write’ about discovering the Martha lode because several people had made claims to have done so and the latest claimant was petitioning for a reward.5 In 1921 he published a more detailed account of finding gold at Waihi in the Auckland Star, which gave him the by-line of ‘Prospector and Discoverer of the Martha’. ‘I am sorry for having to write this article, for I hate notoriety, and never met the man yet that was any good that was a lover of it. But in self-defence I have put pen to paper otherwise the facts as I know them would have been buried with me’.6 ‘Advance’ found his article ‘very interesting reading to all old Aucklanders, 1 Whose name was commonly given as Nichol, Nichols, Nicholls, and even Niccol; for consistency, it is given in its correct form of Nicholl throughout. 2 Auckland Star, 8 September 1928, Magazine Section, p. 1. 3 Thames Star, 10 August 1937, p. 3. 4 W.S.C. Nicholl, untitled memoirs, n.d. [1927], p. 1, MS 1714, Alexander Turnbull Library (hereafter Nicholl, 1927). 5 W.S.C. Nicholl, ‘Discovery of Waihi Goldfield’, Waihi Daily Telegraph, n.d., reprinted in Ohinemuri Gazette, 24 July 1901, p. 2 (hereafter Nicholl, 1901). 6 W.S.C. Nicholl, ‘Discoverers of Waihi: Glimpses of the Early Days: Opening Up the Big Lode’, Auckland Star, 8 September 1921, p. 7 (hereafter Nicholl, 1921). 3 also to the rising generation’, and hoped he would ‘publish his experience in book form’, for in recent years some of the most prominent early miners had died and losing details of their prospecting would be ‘a great loss to New Zealand’.7 In response, Nicholl’s elder son stated that it was his father’s ‘present intention to write an article on his last experience in connection [with] and severance from the Waihi Gold Mining Co., and also to publish a book on the life of a prospector, including such goldfields as Coromandel, Thames, Te Aroha, Waihi, his experiences in Fiji, Maratoto, and the big rush to Klondike’.8 Three years later, a geologist wrote that Nicholl was living ‘in retirement at Waitekauri, where he is reported to be writing a history of prospecting in the Hauraki Goldfield’.9 Nicholl completed these memoirs in 1927, and showed it to some of the residents at Waitekauri, one of whom, William Frederick Morgan, told his son that because of his bad handwriting ‘you couldn’t read it’.10 That his handwriting was dreadful can be confirmed by perusing the (untitled) original, now in the Alexander Turnbull Library.11 The Auckland Star, which serialised most of it during 1928, repeated some of his mis-spellings, particularly of people and places.12 It also censored what he wrote about his marital problems by blotting out these two sections with a blue pencil, a note on the back of one of these pages instructing: ‘Some of this (personal portion) to be deleted’.13 To prepare it for publication, a sub-editor also over-wrote some of Nicholl’s script to revise his spelling and sentence structure. Just before Nicholl’s death in August 1937, James Prichard Wilson, headmaster of the Waihi High School,14 who had visited him at Waitekauri in the early 1930s to listen to his reminiscences, presented this memoir to 7 Letter from ‘Advance’, Auckland Star, 13 September 1921, p. 9. 8 Letter from G.G. Nicholl, Auckland Star, 16 September 1921, p. 3. 9 P.G. Morgan, The Geology and Mines of the Waihi District, Hauraki Goldfield, New Zealand (Geological Survey, Bulletin No. 26 (New Series), Wellington, 1924), p. 5. 10 Interview with Herbert John Morgan, Hamilton, 29 November 1998. 11 W.S.C. Nicholl, untitled memoirs, n.d. [1927], MS 1714, Alexander Turnbull Library. 12 Auckland Star, 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 September 1928, 6, 13, 20, 27 October 1938, Magazine Sections, pp. 1. 13 Nicholl, 1927, note on back of p. 35. 14 See Thames Supplementary Electoral Roll, No. 1, 1938, p. 44; New Zealand Herald, 11 August 1937, p. 15. 4 the Alexander Turnbull Library.15 He also gave a typescript copy entitled ‘The Thames Today and as it Opened 60 Years Ago’, a misreading of the first line, to the Auckland Public Library. This typescript copied Nicholl’s mis-spellings of names and places but corrected many mistakes in the spelling of other words and added both punctuation and paragraphs.16 This was necessary, for Nicholl wrote in a ‘stream of consciousness’, usually without paragraphs and often using the words ‘and’ or ‘so’ in place of full stops. After leaving Waitekauri in 1935 to live with his half-sister in Auckland, he wrote an untitled addition to his memoirs, concentrating on his discovery of the Martha lode, with the same bad spelling but written in even worse handwriting because of his age and poor eyesight. He sent this to Wilson, accompanied by an undated letter: ‘I felt sorry ever since you called at my hut at Waitekauri that I didn’t dictate the start of mining at Waihi. I have written out a short account of it and if you can understand it, as I am very shaky and my eyes are a little dull, if you can do anything with it you can publish it. It is the best I can do’.17 His eyes must have been extremely ‘dull’ if he considered it necessary to dictate his recollections. This new version of part of his life’s story was included with the 1927 memoirs presented to the Alexander Turnbull Library.18 An expanded account of his 1921 version of how he discovered the Martha lode was written, at an unknown date, and given to his elder son, George Grey Nicholl, who permitted its publication in 1969; the original, which may have included additional information on his life, has been lost.19 All quotations taken from these various memoirs have corrected spelling, corrected or added punctuation, added or removed capital letters that were used rather randomly, occasionally replaced ‘and’ or ‘so’ with full stops when sentences became interminable, and added paragraphs.