Ships at anchor, Kororāreka

Ships at anchor, Kororāreka

This lithograph, dated 1840, shows a large number of vessels moored off Kororāreka (now known as Russell). In the 1830s the town was a trading centre for whalers, seafarers and merchants, but it also attracted deserters, escaped convicts and other lawless individuals, earning it the title ‘hell-hole of the Pacific’. Several attempts to impose law and order culminated in the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840.