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Muzzle loading percussion sporting rifle, calibre .71, made by John Boston, Wakefield, England, about 1860.
The silver plaque on the butt of this rifle records that it was presented by Sir George Grey, the Governor of New Zealand, to Captain Charles Heaphy of the Auckland Rifle Volunteers in recognition of Heaphy's bravery in action at Waiari on 11 February 1864.
Three years later, Heaphy received further recognition of his bravery when he became the first member of the New Zealand armed forces to be awarded the Victoria Cross.
This extract originally appeared in Te Ata o Tū The Shadow of Tūmatauenga: The New Zealand Wars Collections of Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2024).
This extract was authored by Michael Fitzgerald.
On the hot afternoon of 11 February 1864, over 100 Kīngitanga warriors were in hiding along the banks of the Mangapiko stream. They were waiting for nightfall, and planned to mount a surprise early-morning attack on one of the army’s forward positions in front of Pāterangi . . .
The Kīngitanga plan for a pre-emptive strike on an army post was spoilt when a party of about 50 soldiers came to the river bank opposite the warriors’ hiding place . . . Heaphy performed well in the fierce action. Going forward with three soldiers under cross-fire to rescue Private Cussan of the 50th, who had been wounded after rushing too close towards the enemy, Heaphy was struck by five bullets. It was the ‘wonder of the camp’ that he survived the volley aimed at him – two of the men who went with him were killed – and although Cussan died while being carried back to camp, the bravery of Heaphy’s attempt to rescue him was quickly recognised.1
Only two weeks later, the New Zealander newspaper made this report:
We are informed that H.E. Governor Sir G. Grey has marked his sense of Captain Heaphy’s late Services, especially at the Waiari skirmish, by presenting that gentleman with a handsome Rifle . . . It gives us great pleasure to record that so well deserved a compliment has been paid to Captain Heaphy . . . [who] distinguished himself at Waiari by a combination of humanity and courage . . .2
The presentation of this rifle may have led Heaphy to pursue even more prestigious recognition, and seek for himself the empire’s highest award for gallantry, the Victoria Cross. Following Heaphy’s persistent lobbying on the grounds that Havelock had placed him in command of men ‘of Her Majesty’s Regiments – a position for a Volunteer Officer unprecedented and probably not likely to recur’, together with the support of senior professional soldiers such as Cameron and Havelock,3 he became the first non-regular soldier, and the first New Zealander, to be awarded the Victoria Cross at a grand parade of British and local troops in Auckland on 8 May 1867.4
Some of the regular soldiers on parade may have wondered why the bravery of their comrades who had volunteered to go to the rescue of Cussan had not also been recognised. As a veteran of the 57th Regiment commented in his memoirs, ‘Whoever heard of a man in the Imperial Army putting in an application for a Victoria Cross or other decoration, except the long service and usual war medals?’5
1 CJS Foljambe, RN, HMS Curacoa, Auckland, 24 February 1864, MS-Papers-1283, Alexander Turnbull Library.
2 ‘Presentation of a Rifle to Captain Heaphy of the A.R.V.’, New Zealander, 25 February 1864, p. 5.
3 ‘Despatches from the Governor of New Zealand to the Secretary of State’, Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1865, Session I, A-05a, pp. 6–7.
4 Daily Southern Cross, Auckland, 13 May 1867, p. 5.
5 Sergeant-Major Edwin Bezar, Some Reminiscences of the ‘Die Hards’ (57th West Middlesex Regiment) (Mills Dick & Co., Dunedin, 1891), p. 83.