Boyd massacre
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The Boyd was a 395 ton brigantine convict ship which sailed from Sydney Cove to Whangaroa on the east coast of Northland Peninsula in New Zealand in October 1809, under the command of a Captain John Thompson and carrying about 70 passengers.
Aboard the ship was George, the son of a Māori chief from Whangaroa. He asked to work his passage on the boat, but once on board he refused to obey certain orders claiming he had bad health and that he was the son of a chief. He was flogged twice.
On reaching Whangaroa, where the Boyd was to pick up kauri spars, George reported the indignities he had been subjected to and showed the marks on his back where he had been whipped. The Māori extracted utu (revenge) by killing all but four of the seventy Europeans on board, and eating many of them.
The ship The City of Edinburgh, went to Whangaroa with Alexander Berry, to deal with the aftermath of the massacre. Berry rescued four survivors, an apprentice named Davies, and a woman with two children. He captured two Māori chiefs responsible for the massacre but, after threatening them with death and securing the Boyd's ship papers, released them as slaves rather than chiefs. His clemency did avoid a bloodshed, which would have been inevitable if he had executed the men. The former chiefs themselves expressed him gratitude for his clemency.
