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Overview
This is a portrait of James 'Jimmy' Jackson, probably taken in the early-to-mid 1870s. Jackson is in his later years, and is shown seated in a frock coat, shirt and trousers, with his hands on his knees. The photograph has a cameo framing, and is mounted on card with a dark brown border and a gold bevelled edge.
James Jackson
Born in Putney in 1800, Jackson came to New Zealand in 1829 as first mate on the schooner Waterloo. He worked under Captain Jacky Guard, who set up a shore-based whaling station at Te Awaiti in Marlborough and appointed Jackson as his second in command. Around 1835 Jackson established his own station at nearby Onapopoti, which was later renamed Jacksons Bay in his honour.
On the 19th of February, 1843, Jimmy married Eliza Roil, known throughout Marlborough as Granny Jackson. The couple had nine children. Their granddaughter Emma Baldick, born 1863, married Edward Guard, son of Jacky and his wife Elizabeth, in around 1877. This photograph was kept at the Guard family home, and was donated in 2017.
Shore-based Whaling
As historian Jock Phillips notes in his short survey of whaling in New Zealand, for the first forty years of the nineteenth century whaling was the most significant industry for Europeans in New Zealand. James Jackson is an important figure in the history of New Zealand’s shore-based whaling industry, which developed in the late 1820s as an alternative to ship-based whale capture. Cook Strait was a centre for shore-based whaling in the 1830s, as it was part of an established migration route for female right whales. In 1839 there were three stations at Te Awaiti, including Jackson’s, which employed approximately forty whalers. When the stations and other private whaling ventures were in full swing, between 15 and 20 boats were sent out from the Bay.
Whaling Settlements
Although the shore whaling industry was short-lived, with whale numbers quickly depleted, it produced great wealth and brought a wave of semi-permanent settlers to New Zealand’s shores. Portrayed as ‘agents of vice and fatal impact,’ whalers, sealers and other members of nineteenth-century beach cultures remained separate from the communities of ‘respectable’ settlers, and as in the case of Jackson and Guard, often linked their families together through marriage. (Belich 1996, 139, and Wanhalla 2013, 22). The care of this image by the Guard family speaks to this interconnection.
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