Two airmen of Maori descent lie buried together on a hilltop in Dorset, England. They are the grandson and great-grandson of a whaling captain who entered New Zealand waters in 1835, and who became one of the leading pioneers of European settlement in Wellington. The story’s main thread covers the four generations involved, and touches on early whaling off New Zealand and in the Pacific, European trading along the East Coast, the settlement and expansion of Wellington, the Thames gold rush and the first sheep stations in the Inland Patea. In 1883 the whaler’s natural daughter, her mother a local Maori, inherited her father’s wealth and moved with her husband to England, living in some of the country’s grand houses. Her eldest son became one of the world’s first aviators, winning a posthumous Victoria Cross over France in 1915. His son, also a decorated pilot, was killed at the height of the Battle of Britain.
Here is a family that lived on frontiers — of colonial exploration and commerce; of cross-cultural encounter; of speed and danger on land and in the air — both in peace and war. Theirs is an extraordinary story.