The following articles appeared in Journal of the Greenwich Historical Society Vol.3 Nos 4&5 and are reproduced with permission from Barbara Ludlow
WHALING FOR OIL
The Rise and Fall of the ‘Enterprising Enderbys’ c 17 50-1855 (Part One)
By BARBARA LUDLOW
Introduction
By the time the Enderbys arrived in Greenwich they were established ship owners, oil merchants and traders. Their first known house in Greenwich was no.66, Hyde Vale. Samuel Enderby leased it in 1758 but he also had a house in Earl Street in the City of London. The Greenwich Rate Books show his wife Elizabeth as the occupier of no.66 from 1761-1764.
Between 1753 and 1762 Elizabeth had seven children, so without doubt the Hyde Vale home was seen as their country house and a good place to bring up the family. However, these babies were not christened in St.Alfege’s Church. There an: entries for all seven children in Mr.Spilsbury’s Protestant and Non-Conformist Register for London. Samuel Enderby’s will shows that he bequeathed money to Rev. H. Worthington, the Pastor of Salters’ Hall [the Hall of the Salters’ Company – ed.] and Rev. Winter, the morning preacher at Salters’ Hall. Part of the Salters’ Company Hall was let out as a chapel. Later a piece of land near the Hall, leased from the company, was used to build a new chapel which was subsequently used by the Baptists. The Enderbys were probably members of this Independent Protestant congregation, which according to Hugh Barty-King, historian of the Salters’ Company, was ‘A byword for dissent.’ The Enderbys were not, however, members of the Salters’ Company.
Seventeenth century facts about the Enderby family are scarce but there is no doubt that during that century they were owners of a tannery in Bermondsey. This information is in the Dictionary of Australian Biography and the entry also includes the fact that they were granted forfeited estates in Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland. As Protestant Dissenters the Enderbys would have been on the side of Cromwell in the Civil War, and it is well known that Irish lands were redistributed by the Parliamentarians who gave them to people they believed would further their cause. The Enderby ownership of Irish land was short lived as, just after the Restoration in 1660, they sold the estates. This money was to take them across the River Thames leaving Bermondsey’s noxious industries of animal slaughter and leather manufacture behind. Unfortunately the name Enderby does not feature in indexes in Southwark Local History Library. Samuel Enderby (1719-1797), in his will left an estate in Bermondsey and a White Lead business near Loman’s Pond, Southwark to his three sons Charles, Samuel and George. Here they were producing a white paint known as Ceruse.
One problem that arises when writing about this family is that they used the same Christian names through the centuries. Samuel Enderby and his son Daniel, 1681-1766, may well have encouraged Samuel, Daniel’s son, to take up a trade other than tanning. In about 1730 Samuel was apprenticed to an oil cooper at Trigg Stairs in the City of London. By 1750 he had his own business in Lower Thames Street but a turning point in his career came when he married Elizabeth the daughter of Charles Buxton, an oil merchant. The London Directory of 1765 has an entry for Buxtons, Sims and Enderby, Oil Merchants, Paul’s Wharf, Thames Street.
Whaling and Exploring
By the 1740s the people of New England were trading as much with the Caribbean as they were with England and gradually American nationalist leaders began to realize that they could probably exist without the mother country. The refusal of the Westminster Parliament to repeal certain taxes such as the tax on tea enabled the rebels to rally support. By 1770 Enderby ships were registered in London and Boston. They took goods to the colonists and brought back whale oil. Tradition has it that it was an Enderby ship that sailed into Boston Harbour with a cargo of tea one day in 1773. As the tea was flung into the water Samuel Enderby and Sons were about to launch a new enterprise. They had depended on Nantucket and New England whalers for oil and they and Parliament knew that if America revolted their supply of oil would be cut off. In 1766 Samuel Enderby had moved from Hyde Vale to West Grove, Blackheath (Plate LX).
Other ships’ owners who lived around the Heath included Alexander Champion, Daniel Bennett and John St. Barb. Later there was also a small colony of ship owners and captains involved in the transportation of convicts to Australia. Samuel Enderby was motivated by the idea of ‘convicts out and whale oil home’. However, he was the prime mover in establishing the Southern Whale Fishery in 1775. Later members of his family were accused of exaggerating his part in the enterprise. This was somewhat unfair as he was prominent in getting the backing of the Government as well as challenging the power of the East India Company
According to Lloyds Register and the Red Book [‘The New Register Book of Shipping’ compiled by the ship owners -ed.] the vast majority of whaling ships left London for the Southern Whale Fishery between 1776 and 1846. H.R.Mill in his book ‘The Siege of the Pole’ (1905) estimated that, by the year 1778, English sealers brought back from the Isle of Georgia and the Magellan Straits as many as 40,000 seal skins. By 1801 the import of oil from these regions reached 6,000 tons – worth nearly £200,000. Within about ten years whalers had brought their prey to near extinction in the South Atlantic.
Samuel Enderby, Senior died at Blackheath in 1797. The ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ stated: ‘The late Samuel Enderby … was a considerable oil merchant in Thames Street and was one of the first who undertook the Southern Whale Fishery some years ago when the Government found it advisable to encourage the trade of the southern hemisphere and by which he realized a large fortune .
‘Before his death he had taken his sons Charles, Samuel and George into partnership with him. The family firm then became known as S.Enderby and Sons. Samuel also provided for his daughter Mary who had married Nathaniel Wheatley a Nantucket sea captain. He stipulated that although he left the house in Earl Street for the use of his eldest son, Charles, he directed that Charles allow Mary to live there rent and rates free for six months. The brothers carried on the business from Paul’s Wharf but had their homes in Blackheath. They were close to each other with their families living variously in Dartmouth Hill, Dartmouth Row, Cambridge House in West Grove, Hyde Vale, Hyde Cliff ‘House and Crooms Hill. In the early years of the nineteenth century there is no mention of any of the Enderby businesses being in Greenwich. Their ships sailed out of London and occasionally Gravesend. The killing of whales and seals was a most unpleasant business and prosperous owners such as the Enderbys did not themselves go whaling. They employed seasoned sea captains who then signed on a crew. One of the most important members of a whaling ship was the harpoonist and the figure of a harpoonist was portrayed in the Enderby Coat of Arms. The oil from the whales came back in barrels to be treated on the banks of the Thames – often in the Millwall area. Seal skins, blubber and baleen could be dealt with in Bermondsey. The Enderby family lived very comfortably off the exploitation of the South Seas!
The need to find new whaling grounds became pressing. Captain Cook crossed the Antarctic Circle in 1773 and reported that the sea was full of whales and seals. Sadly, Cook was stabbed to death in Hawaii in 1779 but his voyages had proved that there was much to explore ‘at the bottom of the world.’ Now whaling captains would become explorers too – their voyages often lasting for two or three years. The owners actively encouraged them to claim new lands for the British Crown. Such new lands were often named after the owners and captains of the whaling ships. In the last decade of the eighteenth century the Enderbys had sent their whaling ship Amelia into the Pacific via Cape Horn and then in 1791 helped to arrange for whalers to carry convicts to Port Jackson in the Third Fleet. Another Enderby ship, the Britannia, became the first ship to take sperm whales off the Australian coast. In 1792 they co-operated with the Admiralty and sent the Rattler under the command of Lt. Colnett, R.N. to survey whaling grounds in the South Pacific. During this trip the Galapagos Islands were also surveyed. .
The Enderbys failed to get permanent contracts for whaling ships to take convicts to Australia, but managed to get supplies to the colony. Their ship the Greenwich arrived in Sydney in 1801 with a cargo ‘well adapted for the inhabitants’. Captain Bristow in the Enderby ship Ocean discovered a small group of islands some two hundred miles south of New Zealand. Unable to land in 1805 he returned in 1807, claimed them for the British and gave the group the name ‘Auckland’ and one of the islands he called Enderby Island. Some forty years later these islands were to have a profound effect on Charles Enderby’s life.
In 1815 the Enderbys owned five whalers whilst Daniel Bennett had thirteen. In 1981 A.E.G. Jones the author of ‘The British Southern Whale and Seal Fisheries’ wrote that ‘Clearly the sons cannot have had the commercial drive of their father. ‘They all lived at Blackheath, somewhat out of touch with daily business. In common with other family firms the sons and grandsons did not always have the same passion for the business as the founders. When business was good the down-to-earth job of dealing in whale oil, blubber and skins was acceptable but it did not equate with being a ‘Gentleman’. Charles, Samuel and George had become part of Greenwich and Blackheath Society. They were Commissioners of the Land and Assessed Taxes, and Trustees of the New Cross Turnpike Road. George was a Vice-President of the Greenwich, Lewisham and Lee Savings Bank and had social aspirations. In 1821 he bought Coombe House, Croydon, which he enlarged. His brother Charles died at Cambridge House, West Grove in 1819 and George, who died in August 1829, left his property in Croydon to his brother. Samuel. Just a few months later Samuel died. In effect the business had become Samuel’s in the last months of his life. As a result the firm passed solely to his three sons Charles, George and Henry.
Samuel Enderby (1756-1829) was living at Hyde Cliff, Blackheath when he died. Samuel had married Mary Goodwyn. It is possible that she was connected with the Goodwyn family who lived at ‘The Hermitage’ at the top of Lewisham Hill. Samuel and Mary had eleven children, two of whom died at birth. Their eldest daughter Elizabeth married Henry Gordon. Their son Charles George was born in 1833 at Woolwich and was to make his mark in history as General Gordon of Khartoum. Charles Gordon was baptized in St.Alfege’s Church, Greenwich where his Uncle George Mathew was Vicar from 1812 to 1833. George Mathew had married Mary Enderby, named after her mother. Samuel Enderby stipulated that his widow Mary should live for another year in Hyde Cliff. A spate of deaths and a decline in Britain’s whaling industry broke up the Enderby colony on and around Blackheath. Strangely the Enderbys contribution to the exploration of the South Pacific and Antarctica would only become national news when the firm was well and truly in decline.
‘Messrs. Charles, George and Henry Enderby; whalers of London and rope and canvass manufacturers of East Greenwich’
Charles and George Enderby were fascinated by new places and new discoveries: scientific and geographical. They were both on the Council of the Royal Geographical Society during the 1830s and the 184Os. In 1831 and 1832 Captain John Biscoe in the Enderby ship Tula made a most valuable contribution to Antarctic exploration by confirming that a great mass of land did exist there. He called the land Enderby Land. At this point the men on the Tula were ill and Biscoe decided to strike out for New Zealand but he then altered his course and went to Hobart, where he duly arrived with only three men and a boy alive. Charles Enderby presented Biscoe with the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society for his exploration work. At this time money was short and Biscoe got no monetary reward for his enterprise. A public collection was made for him in 1842 but he died on his way back to England after another voyage. His family suffered and his children went into the London Orphan Asylum.
The Enderbys faced heavy losses because of the Biscoe voyage but in 1838 they joined with seven other ship owners to send vessels on a new expedition to Antarctica. On this trip the Balleny Islands and Kemp Land were named after two Enderby captains. At this time Charles’s interests were many, some of which involved investing money in new projects. He became a Director of the Anti-Dry Rot Company, which sold a patent protection for timbers and sails. This product was used in the building of a new Samuel Enderby in 1834, the ship immortalized in Melville’s ‘Moby Dick.’ Charles was also interested in steam navigation and invested in the ill-fated British and American Steam Navigation Company. As a Trustee his name was on the register of the President, which sank: without trace in 1841.
It is due to the establishment of a Rope and Sail Works on the bank: of the River Thames in East Greenwich that the name ‘Enderby’ survives in the town today. In 1768 Henry Vansittart bought the old Gregory Page mansion at the foot of Maze Hill. He sold this house in 1777 but retained an interest in developments in Greenwich even though he became Governor of Bengal. In 1802 Vansittart bought the old derelict gunpowder magazine site on the western edge of the Greenwich Peninsula. Although disused since about 1770 the buildings and two jetties still existed. It-has been suggested that the Vansittarts invested in a rope works run by the Enderbys but there is no mention of such a place in Samuel Enderby’s will. However, a rope walk is clearly marked on the Greenwood map-of 1827. The Enderby works plus a house were well established by the mid-1830s
In 1832 the brothers moved their business in London from Paul’s Wharf to Great St. Helen’s in Bishopsgate. They also re-located their warehouse and wharf to Poplar. After the death of their father in 1829 the family moved away from Blackheath and Greenwich. Mary, Samuel’s widow, moved to Cliefden House, which still stands in Eltham High Street. William, Mary’s youngest son married in 1830 and his son Charles was baptized in St.Luke’s Church, Charlton. William’s abode is given as Eltham and his profession as ‘Gentleman.’ His grandson eventually emigrated to New Zealand. Mary Enderby moved from Eltham to a house in Charlton Road just east of Bramhope Lane towards the end of the 1830s and was still living there when she died in 1846.
By 1836 the Enderbys owned one whaling ship – the Samuel Enderby. The Americans and Australians were much nearer the whaling-grounds of the Southern Ocean and this contributed to the difficulties of British whalers. Whale oil and baleen were still in demand but it must have been obvious to the cosmopolitan Enderbys that gas lighting was taking over from oil lamps in the main streets of towns and cities. The brothers invested a great deal of money in their comparatively new East Greenwich works. There was an engine and boiler house over which were hemp and spinning rooms. Joiners’ workshops and loom rooms were in a factory by the riverside close to Charles Enderby’s house (Plate LXIII). The weaving looms were worked by machinery and the all-important ropewalk was a quarter of a mile long.
In the mid-1830s W.F.Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone were working on their invention of the electric telegraph. Wheatstone was discussing a possible telegraph for Stephenson’s London to Birmingham Railway. In a letter to Cooke he said that the Enderby Brothers of Greenwich would make a 1,500 feet long cable of four wires covered with insulated hemp. Wheatstone also wanted a cable for what he described as ‘our cross-Thames experiment.’ In 1837 two experiments were planned involving Enderby ropes.
These were to be insulated waterproof cables, which would go between Wheat- stone’s lecture room on the north side of the Thames to the south bank and from Euston Square to Camden Town. The amount of insulated rope needed had been under-estimated and another company sent cable to help with Cooke and Wheatstone’s electric telegraph. The Enderby rope was not a success as the hemp insulation broke down when wet and a railway director fell over it! It was not until the invention of gutta percha insulation that waterproof cable became viable. Ironically, it was made on the site once occupied by Enderby works.
Charles Enderby lived in his house on the western side of Greenwich Peninsula not too far from Ballast Quay. During 1839 the brothers tried to lease more land from Morden College, a charitable trust that owned a great deal of land on the Peninsula. This proved difficult, as a licence was needed from the trustees to build anything but a bleaching house. The Enderbys offered to exchange land but for that they needed Parliamentary sanction which involved unpredictable costs. They had built ten cottages for their rope makers, which stood at the end of the ropewalk by Blackwall Lane. ‘Enderby Cottages’ were demolished at the end of the nineteenth century.
There is an entry for Charles Enderby on the East Greenwich 1841 Census and his occupation is listed as ‘Merchant.’ Also living in the house was George Adamson, a rope maker and his wife Sarah who is described as Enderby’s housekeeper. The other person listed was Thomas Goodger, Charles’s groom. George and Henry are on the Charlton 1841 Census in their mother’s household. Like Charles their occupation is given as ‘Merchant’. Also in 1841 Charles Enderby was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his ‘Promotion of geo graphical discovery in the Antarctic regions. ‘
One Sunday evening at the beginning of March flames shot into the sky lighting up the west side of the Greenwich Peninsula (Plate LXIII). Without knowing it the people of Greenwich were witnessing an event which would ultimately play a large part in ruining the Enderby family. Soldiers from Woolwich, Greenwich Parish officials, workmen and neighbours tried to save the works of the Enderby Brothers. The factory facing the River Thames was totally destroyed and twelve large looms were very badly damaged, as was Charles Enderby’s house. Charles lost furniture and personal belongings. A hundred feet of the rope walk was destroyed, as was the all-important engine room. The ‘Illustrated London News’ reported that about two hundred and fifty workers were thrown out of work but that the’ loss to the worthy proprietors is well covered by insurance.’ However, it seems that the works were underinsured: an item dated 15th August 1845 in Morden College Archives concerning future leases stipulated that the fire insurance covenant should cover not only the structures for which permission had been given, but all such other buildings which may be built on the land.
By June 1845 ‘Enderby House’ was being extensively repaired. At the same time an extension was built which incorporated the attractive ‘Octagon Room’ on the first floor. This room has a striking angled bay window which looked up and down river. In 1846 the Enderbys took out a lease on Bendish Sluice, which was then covered to make a coach road to the new house. Presumably parts of the manufactory were repaired but there is little evidence that the brothers ever resurrected their East Greenwich Works. The Rope and Canvas Factory was meant to replace their reliance on whaling. Their whaler friend George Sturge of Northfleet became very prosperous when he stopped whaling and promoted the Northfleet cement industry.
Once’ again Charles, George and Henry needed a new enterprise to rescue their business – they turned to the Southern Ocean for the answer. By April 1846 the house on the riverside was habitable again. Mary Enderby had died in Charlton in February 1846 and a notice was placed in the Woolwich Journal of June 1846 to the effect that the late Mrs. Enderby’s house at Charlton was to be let or the lease disposed of. Any business they had left was run from their office in 15, Great St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, and Enderby House in East Greenwich.
The Southern Whale Fishery Company
Charles Enderby had always found Australia and New Zealand fascinating even though he had never travelled to the Antipodes. In the 1830s he bought shares in the Western Australian Whaling Company but this investment came to nothing. Charles joined a group of London ship owners in 1837 who petitioned the Board of Trade for the annexation of New Zealand. In the same year he joined the New Zealand Association. After all, the Auckland Islands, not yet legally part of New Zealand, had been discovered by an Enderby captain who claimed them for the British Crown.
Sir James Clark Ross, the famous explorer had visited the Auckland Islands in 1840. He reported that Port Ross would be an ideal site for a whaling station. Charles Enderby was convinced that the Islands would become a prosperous British colony, making money from whale oil and seal skins as well as being a port-or-call for other ships in the Southern Ocean.
As the Enderby business in London and Greenwich crumbled he and his brother George worked at launching a new company – an 1846 Prospectus for the Southern Whale Fishery Company stated that ‘The Auckland Islands are exceedingly healthy and have rich virgin soil. The settler will be free from aboriginals, there being none on the island’.
In 1847 the British government granted the Enderbys a concession for the -exclusive use of the Auckland Islands as a whaling station. The next two years were spent in establishing the company, forming a fleet of whaling ships and canvassing for crews and settlers skilled in various trades. Sir James C. Ross .called them ‘those truly enterprising merchants the Messrs. Enderby.’
Deputy-Inspector General Richard McCormick, R.N., a man who was on Ross’s 1840 Antarctic voyage, met Charles Enderby for the first time in January 1849. He recorded the event in his’ Autobiography’ giving a rare glimpse of Charles in his East Greenwich house: ‘Thursday, January 4,1849. Having received an introduction to the Enderbys, ship owners of Great St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate Street, I called on them and met with a cordial reception. Mr. Charles Enderby, who is going out to the Auckland Islands to establish a fishery there, had a long conversation with me on these Islands.’
Charles enquired about drawings of the place and declared that McCormick would be invited to dinner. McCormick then reported: ‘On the 10th on my return from town I found Mr. George Enderby awaiting my return at my lodgings in Woolwich to ask me to come on Wednesday next to their dinner and at 6 pm on the 17th eight of us sat down, including the two brothers, at the octagon table in an octagon-shaped room. I sat next to Col. Colquhoun having Professor Airy, the Astronomer Royal, opposite to me … I left at 10pm in company with Professor Airy whose way home lay in the same direction as my own. We parted company on the Greenwich Road, I taking the lower road to Woolwich reaching my lodgings at 10.45 pm.’
‘February 14th I took my sketch of the Auckland Islands, which I made for Charles Enderby, to their office at Great St.Helen’s. He seemed much pleased with it. .’
Charles Enderby took his new friend to the Auckland Whaling Company’s office in Cornhill on March 23rd where McCormick answered questions put to him by the President and Directors of the company. There is no doubt that Charles was a brilliant salesman for the Southern Whale Fishery Company and for his own suitability as the man to set up a new colony in the far-away islands.
August 18th 1849 was the designated date of departure. Charles had been given a farewell dinner at the London Tavern on April 18th where he was spoken of as ‘one of the first citizens of London. ‘He sailed from Plymouth in the Samuel Enderby as did a young man called Frederick Bracegirdle, a grandson of a fisherman who lived at Ballast Quay in East Greenwich. Frederick was then an apprentice whaler who many years later became a Captain and Assistant Harbour Master in Sydney, Australia.
Also on the Samuel Enderby as an apprentice was Robert Reuben Bishop, born 1831 In Brewhouse Lane, Greenwich. In 1851 Charles Enderby officiated at the wedding of Robert to Hannah Towering, daughter of Chief Koro. In the late 1850s Robert Bishop came back to England but without Hannah. He settled for a time in Newcastle upon Tyne where he married again describing himself as a bachelor. Other local adventurers on the Samuel Enderby were Thomas Goodger, Charles’s groom, and Mary Gill of Greenwich (nee Munyard), and her five-year-old daughter. Thomas and Mary were married in 1849 on the voyage to the Auckland Islands. The Goodgers had a son in 1850 who they called Mateora after Chief Matioro. In 1852 they left the settlement for New Zealand but later returned to England where they kept in touch with Charles Enderby.
Making up the flotilla were the Brisk and the Fancy. The first mate on the Brisk was George Cook who acted as an interpreter for the Maori. His mother was Tiraha from the Bay of Islands in New Zealand. A photograph of George Cook indicates that his father was probably British, hence his name. Matilda Fawkes, a servant to Charles Enderby in London, married George Cook on the 22nd December 1849 thus becoming the first couple to be married on the Auckland Islands. It was also the first marriage ceremony performed by Lt. Governor Charles Enderby.
Ironically as the Samuel Enderby left Plymouth a notice appeared in the London Gazette stating that the business belonging to the Enderby brothers W IS in financial difficulties and unable to clear its debts. However, they did not declare bankruptcy as they hoped to recover when the Southern Whale Fishery Company became profitable. Charles Enderby was in receipt of a salary and expenses as the company’s Chief Commissioner. As Lt. Governor of the Auckland Islands he also received money from the Crown. The brothers also had shares in the new venture. At the same time their riverside property in East Greenwich was going on the market. In October 1849 Charles, George and Henry Enderby requested the Trustees of Morden College to take back marshland on lease to them. Morden College had no power to recover the land if but was willing to find a ‘respectable tenant’ to take their place. There was no specific mention of the house at this time. Sometime in the 1850’s George Enderby moved to Northfleet in Kent. He lived in Orme House, which was owned by Thomas Sturge, a Quaker and previously a whaling ~hip owner. George lived at Orme House until 1872 when the old house was demolished. He then moved to the Dover Road, Gravesend, where he died in 1878. Henry, also a bachelor, moved to Fulham in the 1850s where he lived with a male opera singer. He died in 1876.
At the beginning of the 1850s the Enderbys did not have the money or the inclination to resurrect their East Greenwich works. Enderby House, Enderby Wharf and various parts of the rope and canvas factories were extant but by 1854 the site was available for development. Between 1852 and 1854 William Kuper of Camberwell was making wire rope at Morden Wharf, East Greenwich. Kuper was taken over by Glass, Elliot and Company who concentrated on making submarine cables. They needed another site and the now vacant Enderby site was ideal for their expansion. After another merger in 1864 the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company Ltd came into being and became famous for making the first successful Atlantic cable. Alcatel on the same site maintains the telecommunications tradition today.
All this however was in the future when His Excellency Lt. Governor Charles Enderby sailed away in August 1849 to the other side of the world – blissfully unaware of what was to come.
WHALING FOR OIL
The Rise and Fall of the ‘Enterprising Enderbys’ (Part Two)
Charles Enderby and the Enderby Settlement on the Auckland Islands, New Zealand, 1849-52
by BARBARA LUDLOW
The collection of small Sub-Antarctic islands known as the Auckland Islands is some two hundred miles south of Stewart Island, New Zealand. In 1840 Sir James Clark Ross’s expedition to Antarctica and the Southern Ocean anchored for a brief spell in a sheltered cove in the Auckland Islands. This cove was later named Port Ross. On his return to England Ross gave glowing reports about the place. In 1847 when Charles Enderby was heavily involved in getting backing for the Southern Whale Fishery Company and its proposed new whaling station it was Sir James Ross who spoke on his behalf: ‘Those truly enterprising merchants the Messrs. Enderby would find no spot combining so completely the essential requisites for a fixed whaling station.
So it was, with great expectations that some two hundred whalers and settlers sailed out of Plymouth in August 1849 on the Samuel Enderby, the Brisk and the Fancy. Charles was on the Samuel Enderby, which was owned jointly by the Enderbys and the Southern Whale Fishery Company. This ship was the last remnant of the Enderby whaling fleet. The passengers on these ships were not escaping from religious persecution or the law. They were part of a well- ordered plan to create a new colony and had, in fact, been handpicked for their skills by Enderby and the Board of the Company. By 1849 the British had a practice of taking prefabricated buildings on their ships when establishing new settlements. The Southern Whale Fishery Company filled the three ships with ready-made buildings. There were slightly larger buildings for multi- occupancy by bachelors and small cottages for married couples and single women. Thousands of building bricks were carried in the ships as ballast. Two superior houses were to be constructed, one for the Governor on the edge of Erebus Cove and another for William Mackworth, Assistant Commissioner to Enderby. “.
Timber wharves and a large warehouse were completed by the middle of February 1850 enabling all the goods on the ships to be discharged – quite good progress as the three ships arrived between 4th December 1849 and 1st January 1850. The main settlement was at ‘Erebus Cove.’ Slightly inland a site was chosen for a town which was never built.
The idea of ‘self-sufficiency’ was very much part of the plan and three farms were established. Enderby Island also had a garden and was later designated as a holiday place for the Colony’s inhabitants possibly because of its herb- moors. Company offices, a blacksmith’s forge, cooperage and a slip for the whaling ships were necessities. A small prison was built on Shoe Island as it was anticipated that seamen would sometimes drink too much. As it happened the first prisoner was John Rodd, the Surgeon, who was taken there for drunkenness. A damp shed was all that he had for a hospital, which may just have driven him to drink!
It was not until 1851 that a daily school for seven children began. This and Sunday’s Divine Service were left to William Mackworth, the Assistant Commissioner, to run.
The third arm of management was the Accountant responsible for paying wages to settlers, whalers and Maori inhabitants who had welcomed the arrival of the Southern Whale Fishery Company. They were a pool of labour needed in the creation of what was hopefully to be a fair copy of a British fishing port. Sadly, the climate was far from pleasant and the landscape was on the whole ‘harsh.’ Farming, both animal and arable, was to prove difficult because the soil was ‘sour.’ Just three months after his arrival in the Auckland Islands LO. Smith, the first Accountant, became ill and resigned because of heart trouble. His replacement was William Munce of Sydney. Life in the Enderby Settlement fell short of what had been promised and the situation worsened when two Special Commissioners of the Southern Whaling Fishery Company arrived from London at the end of 1851 resulting in a bitter conflict between them and Charles Enderby.
Life in the Enderby Settlement, 1849-1852 based on the Diaries of William Mackworth and William Munce
Charles Enderby’s progression to the Auckland Islands has been explained. In England he was the main driving force in setting up a new colony and whaling station in the Antipodes. William Mackworth and William Munce had no previous connection with whaling and the oil trade; their family backgrounds were totally different. Mackworth’s grandfather was Sir Digby Mackworth, 3rd Baronet and his father was Lieut. Herbert Mackworth R.N., born in 1825. William Mackworth had a public school education and, in 1844, was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge. He did not shine at Trinity and after 1845 he dropped out of the official records. However, all was not lost as at the age of twenty-four he became Enderby’s Assistant Commissioner.
William Munce, born in 1814, was the son of an owner of a wholesale cloth warehouse in Dublin. He received a good education in Ireland but, in 1831, the family sailed to Hobart with a cargo of goods for sale. Samuel Munce then took his business and family to Launceston, Australia, where he opened a store, built a house for himself and then became a builder of ‘Luxurious Houses, Furnished Throughout.’ By 1841, when he died, he was wealthy. His son William had moved to Sydney in 1836 in order to become an accountant. He was well regarded in Sydney and, in July 1850, was offered the job with the Southern Whale Fishery Company. Whereas Enderby and Mackworth were both single Munce was a widower with six children. In December 1850 three of his children and his sister-in-law, Elizabeth McKenny, arrived at Port Ross and later the same day Lieut. Governor Charles Enderby married William and Elizabeth.
Apart from some dry official reports about the activities of the Southern Whale Fishery Company written by the Directors and Charles Enderby be- tween 1850 and 1855 there would have been no detailed record of what took place in the Colony between 1850 and 1852. However, both Mackworth and Munce kept personal Diaries about daily events in the Enderby Settlement. These were discovered and studied in the late Twentieth Century allowing, amongst other things, an insight into the character of Charles Enderby. The question arises as to whether he kept a Diary too. If he did it has disappeared without trace but this is not surprising as the vast majority of Enderby family and business records have vanished into thin air.
The Samuel Enderby with Charles on board reached Port Ross on 4th December 1849. The Brisk arrived at the same place on 11th December 1849. A few weeks later the slower Fancy carrying William Mackworth sailed into Port Ross on 1st January 1850. Mackworth began his Diary immediately and with some criticism of the Chief Commissioner. Could it be that the much younger man recovered from the long journey quicker than his fifty-two year old superior? Mackworth wrote that the confusion on the ships made him anxious and that he undertook the management of affairs on shore. He appointed the Captains of the Brisk and the Samuel Enderby as magistrates and then instructed them to reduce the supply of ‘spirituous liquor.’ A week after his first diary entry Mackworth again queried Enderby’s ability to deal with the Company’s employees. On 8th January he wrote:
‘Found some of the landsmen on board the Samuel Enderby discussing some grievance this morning with the Governor and refusing to go to work. Begged His Excellency to leave the management of the men entirely to me which he stated his intention to do. They obeyed my orders:’
On the 11th February 1850, Charles Enderby placed the management of affairs in Mackworth’s hands. On 4th March he wrote about another dispute: ‘Four men on strike because Enderby would not enlarge their potato allowance.’ Notice the absence of the title ‘His Excellency’ in the entry. To add to the Chief Commissioner’s woes the Brisk arrived back from a whaling trip empty. Mackworth simply wrote – 17th March – ‘Arrived the Brisk from the south. No Oil.’
By the end of March 1850 more new whaling ships belonging to the Southern Whale Fishery Company arrived at Port Ross. On Good Friday (29th March) Mackworth noted in his diary that the Chief Commissioner had made it a holiday but that persons were permitted to work and be paid overtime. No heavy-handed employer here but a more enlightened policy. Many of Mack- worth’s entries simply record brief details about the ships and their crews. However on 17th April 1850 Mackworth wrote: ‘His Excellency suffered last night from a violent spasmodic attack but was fortunately soon pronounced out of danger – we were much alarmed at the time.’ This in fact was the first of at least three ‘violent fits’ that Charles Enderby had whilst in the Settlement.
William Munce left Sydney for the Auckland Islands on 27th July 1850. As Munce headed for Port Ross, Charles Enderby left on 1st August for New Zealand. The purpose of his visit was to order stores and other supplies for the Settlement. He was away for six weeks during which time Munce had sailed into Port Ross.
William Munce arrived in the Settlement on 18th August and, in his Diary entry for 20th August, he reported that he was to have a room in the Governor’s house until Enderby returned from New Zealand.
Charles Enderby arrived in Wellington on 13th August 1850 and the ‘Wellington Independent’ newspaper published an optimistic report about the future of the Enderby Settlement on the Auckland Islands. The Lieut. Governor of the Auckland Islands set out to re-assure Sir George Grey, Governor of New Zealand that the settlers were ‘in high spirits’ and that crops and farm animals’ were doing remarkably well.’ The Colony was not quite a year old and although what Charles Enderby said was not strictly true it was to be expected that there would be teething problems. Also, more importantly, it was he who had listened intently to what Sir James Ross and Robert McCormick had told him about the Islands. Luckily for them their short sojourn at Port Ross was in good weather giving the impression of a pleasant fertile place. In the early 1850s the Directors of the Southern Whale Fishery Company turned on Charles Enderby when things went wrong and accused him of lying about the Islands. Sadly he had only reported what he had been told by two renowned explorers.
However, Charles Enderby’s words about what was the real reason for the Colony were erroneous. In August 1850 he said, ‘Whales are beginning to frequent the Auckland Islands in great numbers.’ This was not so and whaling in ‘home’ waters proved impossible on the whole. Only two catches rated attention during the Company’s presence in the islands. In January 1851 a School .of pilot whales ‘chased into Laurie Harbour, yielding about fifty barrels of oil and a large whale, which was take n in the Islands in June 1852, produced sixty barrels.’ The whalers also hunted and killed seals but the sale of sealskins and seal oil from these products would not be able to sustain the Southern Whale Fishery Company and the number of oil-filled barrels was disappointingly low.
The Lieut. Governor returned to Port Ross on 14th September and took over the running of the settlement from William Mackworth. There is no doubt that ‘drink’ was a major problem – a problem which affected officers and work- men alike. Women also took to the bottle. On 17th October 1850 Hephzibah Hallett, the sister of Chief Medical Officer Hallett, tried to shoot her brother. She missed him but shot herself in the head. Fortunately, she recovered and Mackworth decided to form a Total Abstinence Society. About six inhabitants signed ‘The Pledge.’ William Mackworth visited New Zealand in late October and William Munce was appointed Magistrate in his place.
On 21st October Charles Enderby asked Dr. Hallett to resign. The following day Charles suffered another ‘spasmodic attack’ possibly due to the strain of the Hallett affair. A week later Charles Enderby agreed to keep Dr. Hallett as the Colony’s doctor on Hallett’s assurance that his sister would not behave badly again.
Sir George and Lady Grey arrived in Ross Bay on 28th November 1850. Governor Grey stepped ashore to a four-gun salute. He and his wife were invited to the First Anniversary Celebrations of the founding of the Colony. A ‘dejeuner’, food, games and dancing were planned but the ‘dejeuner’ was postponed when Miss Hallett arrived. Female guests left but, later on, there was singing and dancing. The Greys left the Auckland Islands the next day impressed by Charles’s energy. Dr. Hallett was finally dismissed on 27th December 1850 and two weeks later he and his sister sailed to Sydney on the Fancy.
The first day of January 1851 was a holiday and the year began with good weather and a fair number of barrels of oil to be sent to Sydney. By the last week in January there were eight whaling ships based at Port Ross but Mack- worth was having difficulty in recruiting crews on account of the California Gold Rush. In London the Directors of the Southern Whale Fishery Company were worried about the small profit from oil received from Port Ross and the large amount of money needed to maintain the settlement. The main problem as far as Enderby, Mackworth and Munce were concerned was the continuous high consumption of alcohol. Medical Officer Rodd nearly drowned when he fell near the jetty – he was completely intoxicated. He was once again imprisoned Shoe Island for a day.
Far more serious was the case of John Cooper, a bricklayer, who was sentenced to three months on Shoe Island for threatening to kill Lieut. Governor Enderby. Cooper arrived at the prison on 12th February and he, with other prisoners, immediately burnt it down! William Mackworth recorded in his diary that he had a problem with Charles Enderby, who sent troublemakers and drunkards to prison and invariably set them free very, very quickly. The Assistant Commissioner was beginning to question Charles Enderby’s ability to run the Colony.
When ships of the Royal Navy sailed into Port Ross the Lieut. Governor entertained the Captain, officers and passengers. William Mackworth and William Munce were usually invited. The Assistant Commissioner and the Accountant rarely criticized Charles Enderby in their diaries but they did not praise him much either. However on 12th May 1851, William Mackworth recorded that the whalers were ‘mutinous’ over the destruction of ‘spirituous liquor.’ He wrote: ‘The wisest step of the Chief Commissioner since his arrival had been taken today.’ The problem of drink was not solved as Mackworth later wrote: ‘General scene of intoxication afloat and on shore.’ Suddenly Charles Enderby decided to go to New Zealand, leaving the management of affairs in Mack- worth’s hands. On 4th July 1851, Charles left the settlement and did not return until 29th October 1851. He appears to have conducted some business on behalf of the Southern Whale Fishery Company in Sydney and Wellington. In Wellington he denied rumours that the settlement was breaking up. Through- out his life things had often gone wrong for Charles and this trip would add to his worries. He travelled to Auckland especially to see Bishop Selwyn about engaging a clergyman for the Auckland Islands. It was a completely wasted journey as the Bishop was far away.
When Charles Enderby did return to Port Ross, William Munce wrote in his diary: ‘October 31st, 1851 – Received the accounts from the Governor of transactions in Sydney and New Zealand – all in a mixed state which will make it difficult to enter satisfactorily.’ Back in London, the Directors of the Company were not at all happy about their far-removed enterprise and had dispatched two ‘Special Commissioners’ to the Auckland Islands with powers to alter things if necessary. George Dundas, M.P. for Linlithgow and Thomas Preston, Secretary of the Southern Whale Fishery Company, arrived on 19th December 1851 and within three days took over the management of everything
On New Year’s Eve William Munce and other officers spent the evening with Charles Enderby who promptly produced two bottles of champagne. Very quickly Dundas and Preston began to make life unpleasant for the Lieut. Governor. In order to get a crew together for whaling they acted like a ‘Press Gang’ by taking Crozier, Charles’s cook, and young boys called ‘Raw Hands.’ Munce felt their attitude to Charles Enderby was very arrogant. For some unexplained reason William Munce only made one more entry in his diary, although he did not leave the Colony until the end of July 1852. William Mackworth returned from Sydney on 20th February 1852 to find that Charles Enderby had resigned his post as Chief Commissioner at the insistence of the Special Commissioners. The next day a black sailor named John Downs died. On 22nd February Charles Enderby, no longer Chief Commissioner but still Lieut. Governor of the Auckland Islands, claimed that Downs had died from serious neglect and that the Special Commissioners did nothing to help him. Enderby refused to bury John Downs until he had seen the cause of death on a death certificate. To counter this demand the Special Commissioners appointed William Mackworth as Acting Chief Commissioner on 23rd February and ordered him to have John Downs buried at once, an instruction which he immediately carried out. The ‘John Downs affair’ brought Charles Enderby into direct conflict with the Special Commissioners and he put up notices around the Settlement stating that he had been ‘grossly insulted.’
The next three years of Charles Enderby’s life were given over to legal action against Dundas and Preston concerning their total neglect of John Downs. The action started in New Zealand and ended in the Westminster Parliament.
The end of the Enderby Settlement and the departure of Charles Enderby for New Zealand
On their arrival the Special Commissioners had inspected the accounts and, seeing heavy expenditure and small returns, they declared that the failure of the whaling settlement was inevitable. They accused Charles Enderby of telling lies about everything. However, they did not have the power to cancel his title of ‘Lieut. Governor of the Auckland Islands.’ No longer in the employ of the Southern Whale Fishery Company, Dundas and Preston gave instructions for Enderby’s wages to be made up. He would receive nothing for the three and a half months he had spent in New Zealand in 1851 and, rather spitefully, he was charged for the spirits he had destroyed in an effort to stop heavy drinking amongst the Company’s employees. On 25th February 1855
William Mackworth reported that Charles had told him that he would do his best to ruin the Company if its representatives went on treating him badly. The next day he was ordered to give up his official residence. Charles Enderby replied that he would not comply with the order and that he would shoot Mackworth or any other man attempting to remove him or his effects from the house. William Mackworth then decided not to talk to Charles unless he was forced to. A few days later Charles Enderby gave in and moved out of his residence and moved into some small rooms. At this point he must have felt abandoned, as he was not allowed to take post or packages to any ship in Port Ross. He was also to inform Mackworth if he wanted to visit other parts of the Auckland Islands. He was being treated like a prisoner.
The Special Commissioners informed Charles that he would have to leave and travel with them to Wellington on 8th March 1852. Enderby sent a note to them refusing to leave. As it happened Sir Everard Home had arrived on H.M.S Calliope and he informed him that he was Lieut. Governor until he received notice from Her Majesty’s Government. H.M.S. Calliope left Port Ross on 31st March leaving Enderby isolated again. The inhabitants of the Settlement were informed at the end of March that the Company was abandoning the Auckland Islands. Buildings, which belonged to the Company, would be taken to pieces and sold in Sydney or New Zealand. There was a sale by auction of goods from Charles’s rooms and he received £13.Us.3d for the same. The Special Commissioners made arrangements for the Maoris and Moriori to go to New Zealand if they wanted to. George Cook replied on their behalf that they wished to remain on the Islands. William Mackworth had hardly mentioned the Maoris in his diary but an entry for 5th April 1852 reads: ‘The two New Zealand chiefs were offered the use of two vacant houses of the Company by the Special Commissioners. Nanterri declined, the wife of Mateoro accepted one for her husband without much appearance of thankfulness. These poor creatures do not feel, think or act as we do and it is very difficult to know how to deal with them.
The Black Dog was made ready to take passengers to New Zealand. On 11th April 1852 Charles visited Enderby Island with some of the Company’s workers. William Mackworth was annoyed because he had not been told about the ‘outing.’ Charles was still against going to New Zealand and on 12th April the Special Commissioners threatened to put him in irons unless he agreed to go with them to Wellington. He was being treated as though he had committed a crime and, because of this, Charles Enderby agreed to go with them ‘in order to refute their several charges.’
At last the Black Dog left Port Ross on 24th April 1852 and Charles Enderby’s life on the Auckland Islands was over. He arrived in Wellington on 17th May 1852 with wages owing him from 1851 and money from the sale of his goods – altogether he had about £128. In Wellington Charles turned to Sir George Grey for support and amazingly won his sympathy with the result that Preston and Dundas were arrested! They were released on bail because Dundas was a Member of Parliament. In fact, Sir George Grey felt that the dispute was a Company matter and he did not want to interfere. And so it was that, on 24th May 1852, Lieut. Governor Charles Enderby, in full regalia, George Dundas and Thomas Preston attended the Queen’s Birthday Ball where Sir George Grey named Charles as the Guest of Honour. For a few hours Charles Enderby was able to enjoy his high rank! Behind the scenes the position of Sir George Grey was difficult. He knew that the Auckland Islands had become part of New Zealand in 1842 but lack of communication between the Colonial Office in London and New Zealand confused the issue and the Islands were wrongly named as a separate British Crown Colony in 1849. Therefore the descendant of rich whalers held his high office by default.
In June 1852 the case of Enderby versus Dundas and Preston was heard in Wellington. Lack of evidence meant there would be no trial but the Judge reprimanded the Special Commissioners for the way they had treated Charles Enderby. Costs were covered by both parties but Dundas and Preston had to pay Charles £400. A very good sum in 1852.
Whilst Enderby was engrossed in his legal battle in New Zealand, William Mackworth and William Munce were organizing the closure of the Colony. In July 1852 the Munce family left for Sydney where William became a successful businessman. He died in 1892.
On 4th August 1852 one hundred and twenty three seamen and ninety-two colonists sailed with William Mackworth to Dunedin, New Zealand. Here William married his fiancée Juliet Valpy. Mackworth wrote in his diary on 4th August: ‘At sea. Calm all night … The satisfaction I feel at this moment is be- yond description. My miserable life at Port Ross will never be forgotten.’ He made one more entry on 13th August 1852 which was about the bad weather and the difficulty of the journey his entry ended with these words: ‘Pilot and Captain both inform me that there is no cause for uneasiness on the score of the ship. Blowing a gale of wind from the North East.’
William and his wife visited England in 1853/4 and then sailed from Bristol to Melbourne. Sadly, William died of typhoid fever in Melbourne on 4th December 1855. He was thirty years old.
Charles Enderby stayed in Wellington for another year trying to win his ‘case’ against the Special Commissioners. He eventually arrived back in England towards the end of 1853 determined to take his grievance to Parliament.
The end of ‘Enderby Brothers ‘Whose interest in Antarctic exploration was such that it eventually bankrupted them’ (Fergus Fleming. Barrow’s Boys. 1998)
The failure of the business cannot be totally blamed on Charles Enderby although he had a bad press in some Twentieth Century articles on the whaling industry. It was inevitable that the invention of gas lights would eventually diminish the need for whale oil. Very early gas lighting gave off a yellow glow and a horrid smell but it was a vast improvement on crude whale oil lamps. For instance, gas lights in mills were safer than oil lamps enabling production to continue through the night. The Enderbys had contact with the new gas maker and their by-products from gas, but whether their rope works at East Greenwich was using gas is unknown. It would be ironic if their own whale oil had contributed to its destruction in the 1845 fire.
Whether Charles Enderby visited Greenwich when he came back from New Zealand is debatable. His family had left the area and the business had collapsed. Whaling, rope making and white lead manufacture were all completely finished. The firm was dissolved in 1854 but, because it was not declared bankrupt, there are no official papers and the family’s business records have mostly disappeared. Charles had left England in 1849 as His Excellency Lieut. Governor Enderby. He returned as Mr. Enderby but still obsessed with pursuing Dundas and Preston for turning him out of Government House in the Enderby Settlement and therefore ‘demoting’ him. He also had a burning com- plaint against them over Seaman John Downs and his death from ‘Salivation, scurvy and dysentery.’ Fairly or unfairly Charles was determined to prove that the two Special Commissioners had deliberately left Downs to die. This Co.. – was, of course, a lost cause. Parliamentary Papers of 1855 record letters from Charles Enderby: two with the Enderby’s old City address of 13, Great St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, but most of his letters to Westminster had no address at all. Two were addressed to R.Peel, Esq., M.P., Downing Street. Too late, for Sir Robert Peel had died in 1850.
On 22nd February 1858, Charles Enderby read a short paper on ‘Sabrina Land’ at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society. At the same time he presented Captain John Balleny’s ‘Journal’, written on board the Eliza Scott, to the Society. Balleny had been one of the Enderbys’ Antarctic captains. The Royal Geographical Society also has a few letters which Charles sent to the Secretary in about 1860. The correspondence concerned back issues of the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society which he wanted to be sent to Thomas Sturge.
Charles Enderby wrote to Dr. Norton Shaw, Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, in 1861 about recent Antarctic discoveries. A few sentences from his letter illustrate what he felt was the purpose of his life: ‘It is the duty of the Government to follow up the recent Antarctic discoveries not only for the object of affording large returns from prosecuting the seal fisheries but for the purpose of determining the formation of the planet we inhabit. I feel deeply interested in all that concerns the Antarctic Ocean and am very desirous of inducing some of our scientific navigation to urge on the Government the importance of equipping another expedition to those seas.’
Charles Enderby, the man who had tried to save a once prosperous family business by moving it to the other side of the world, died on 31st August 1876, aged seventy-eight. By then he was in an impecunious state and due to ill health ‘living in a back room off the Fulham Road.’
My thanks to the following for their help and forbearance: – Conon Fraser in New Zealand; Sarah Strong, Royal Geographical Society; New Zealand High Commission, London; Julian Watson. Humphrey at Southwark Local Studies Library, Ken McGoverin in Gravesend, Dr. Mary Mills, Jenny O’Keefe at Greenwich Heritage Centre, Neil Rhind, Julian Watson, Elizabeth Wiggans at Morden College Archives and Katie George, Archivist to the Salters’ Company.
Select Bibliography
Enderby, Barbara. Enderby family tree. Ms.
Enderby, H.H. Notebook. Wanganui, N.Z. 1941.
Enderby Settlement Diaries, 1849-1852. Edited by P.Dingwall, C.Fraser, J.G.Gregory, C.J.R.Robertson. Wild Press and Wordsell Press. 1999. N.Z.
Bishop, N. Seafaring Bishops. 2006
Bowers, B. Sir Charles Wheatstone. 1975
Dakin, W.J. Whalemen adventurers. 1934
Fleming, F. Barrows Boys. 1998
Hubbard, G. Cooke and Wheatstone. 1965
Jones, A.E.G. The British Southern Whale and Seal Fisheries. 1981
Kimbell, J. An account of Legacies … 1816
McCormick, R. Voyages of Discovery in the Arctic and Antarctic Seas … 1881
Tadman, J. Captain Fred. Bracegirdle, Master Mariner, 1999
Lawford, G.L. & Nicholson, L.R. Te1con Story, 1850-1950. 1950
Transactions of the Greenwich and Lewisham Antiquarian Society
Original sources:
Greenwich and Southwark Rate Books
Census turns
Parish Registers
Poll Books
Newspapers
Trade Directories
Wills and Letters
Enderby Legacy in Antarctica and Sub-Antarctica
Enderby Land, Antarctica; Mount Gordon, Antarctica; Enderby Island in the Auckland Islands, Sub-Antarctica,
There has never been a permanent settlement on the islands since the colonists and the Maori left in the mid-1850s. Erebus Cove Museum is now in the castaway boatshed next to the tourist landing site. A track leads to the settlers’ cemetery. Some house sites are visible but the taking of souvenirs is forbidden. Today, Enderby Island is famous for the wild life there: Hooker Sea Lions, Yellow-Eyed Penguins, the Royal Albatross and, of course, the Herb Moors.
The Enderby Legacy in literature
The Pequod of Nantucket meets the Samuel Enderby of London: ‘Ship ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?’ So cried Ahab.’ (Herman Melville. Moby Dick. 1851.) (concluded)
The Enderby Legacy in Greenwich:
There are reminders of the Enderby family in Greenwich today: Enderby House and Enderby Wharf on the Greenwich Peninsula and Enderby Street in East Greenwich.
A model of the Samuel Enderby whaling ship is in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
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Greenwich Peninsula History 