“One of the earliest accounts of New Zealand was the journal of Richard Cruise, captain in the 84th Foot Regiments and in charge of the military detachment on the Dromedary in 1829. As Cruise explains in his preamble … the Dromedary had been fitted up as a convict ship and, after delivering 369 male convicts to Port Jackson, proceeded to New Zealand with its detachments of soldiers from the 69th and 84th regiments to pick up a cargos of spars. The Dromedary spent ten months in the various bays of Northland and Cruise maintained a ‘constant intercourse with the inhabitants’ which he recorded in his journal, ‘noted down while fresh in his memory’” (Wevers).
An important record of the inter-tribal war period, Cruise also saw the Bay of Islands, Whangaroa, Hokianga, the Waitemata and the Thames.
Abbey Travel, 586; Hocken, p.39; NZNB I, 1503; Bagnall, New Zealand Bibliography, C1818; Wevers, L., Country of Writing: Travel Writing and New Zealand, 1809-1900 (Auckland, 2002).
