Meticulous research has brought Ian Farquhar face-to-face with the real Johnny Jones. The colourful early Otago settler's story is more tempestuous and far-reaching than we have been led to believe, Mr Farquhar tells Bruce Munro.
Ian Farquhar's tall, dapperly dressed frame is folded into an easy chair near the wide living-room window.
As a teenager in postwar Dunedin, he watched excitedly from this spot high on Otago Peninsula as grey ships sailed up Otago Harbour. It was the beginning of a lifelong fascination with all things nautical.
Decades later, trees now obscure much of that harbour view. But the 83-year-old, who has had a shipping agency career, raised a family and been awarded a Queen's Service Medal, does not mind.
''You reach a stage in life where it doesn't really matter. You've seen it before,'' he says.
Instead, his focus is on events beyond the line of sight, his energy channelled to making new discoveries in old history. With his latest project, Mr Farquhar appears to have hit the mother lode, twice.
His new book, The Shipping Interests of John Jones, reveals a man who had become one of the largest ship-owners in Sydney before losing almost everything just after moving to New Zealand.
The book also provides compelling evidence that Jones was planning the expansion of his harbour steamship company which, after his death, gave rise to what became the southern hemisphere's largest shipping business, the Union Steam Ship Company.
For the past three years, Mr Farquhar has been meticulously researching the business activities of Johnny Jones, one of colonial Otago's colourful characters. He began, like most others, with the well-established and uniformly accepted story of Jones' place in the history of the province.
Born at Sydney Cove, Australia, in about 1809, the young John Jones spent some time at sea before becoming a ferryman. At the age of 19, he married Sarah Sizemore. Together they had 11 children, nine of whom survived beyond childhood.
Between 1835 and 1840, he gained a controlling interest in a handful of whaling ships and seven New Zealand whaling stations, the story goes. He bought a large chunk of what is now North and Central Otago from Ngai Tahu chief Hone ''Bloody Jack'' Tuhawaiki. But that sale was later largely annulled by the Government.
At Waikouaiti, Jones established the first permanent European settlement on the east coast of the South Island. And when economic depression hit Sydney, he moved his family across the Tasman Sea to the fledgling settlement, Matanaka Farm.
He spent time in Wellington before returning to Waikouaiti where he ruled the settlement with the force of his personality and, occasionally, his fists.
When Scottish settlers began arriving in Dunedin, Jones' farm became an important source of food. He gave land to various church denominations, including the land on which was built St Paul's Anglican Cathedral, in the Octagon.
He moved to Dunedin in 1854 and pursued business opportunities, especially harbour and coastal shipping. During an economic slump in the mid-1860s, he helped Dunedin settlers by charging a lower interest rate on mortgages he held.
He died in 1869 and is remembered as that fiery-tempered generous outsider Johnny Jones.
From that leaping-off point, Mr Farquhar, with his business background and several post-retirement maritime histories under his belt, dived deeper. He painstakingly went through 18 years of microfilmed editions of what became the Sydney Morning Herald, searching for any references to John Jones and his ships, building a comprehensive picture of his enterprise and its activities.
Whereas previous histories had mentioned only five Sydney-registered ships, Mr Farquhar identified more than 20 that were owned or part-owned by Mr Jones during that early period. In fact, a report on Mr Jones which Mr Farquhar discovered in an 1840 edition of the Sydney Monitor & Commercial Advertiser called him ''the largest ship-owner in these parts''.
It raises Mr Jones' business acumen to a whole new level. It also shows from what heights he fell shortly after he and his family shifted to New Zealand in 1843.
By then the whaling industry had collapsed. But because his financial meltdown occurred in Australia in 1844 and his previous wealth was not known, it appears New Zealand historians prior to Mr Farquhar have assumed he escaped without being bankrupted. In fact, he lost virtually everything.
Mr Farquhar calculates his total debt was 35 times greater than the average insolvency in New South Wales at that time.
There are, however, indications Mr Jones foresaw the gathering storm and made preparations.
He transferred the ownership of one of his ships, Scotia, to his brother-in-law, putting it beyond the grasp of debt-collectors.
And, searching ship ownership papers, Mr Farquhar saw that shortly before the collapse Mr Jones, who had always paid for everything in cash, took out three loans, and then abandoned the country. I
t was his way of ensuring he could ''take capital out of the business'' to fund his new farm-focused life in Waikouaiti, Mr Farquhar surmises.
In New Zealand, Mr Jones yearned for the urban atmosphere he had been used to in Sydney. He spent a lot more time in Wellington than Waikouaiti, until a 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck the Wellington and Marlborough regions in October, 1848.
Then safety trumped lifestyle. This is a new interpretation by Mr Farquhar, but one that seems to fit the facts. Within three weeks of the earthquake, Mr Jones and his family were on a schooner heading south.
Mr Farquhar's research has led him to two other observations which help flesh out the picture of Jones the man.
The first was Mr Jones' talent for identifying people with potential and then entrusting them with responsibility, to the benefit of both parties.
''Long voyages at sea in sealing vessels with a group of rough men in close quarters had sharpened Jones' understanding of human nature,'' Mr Farquhar writes.
''One of his most valuable attributes was his ability to select skilful people attuned to his requirements.''
There was James Bruce, master of the 83-ton schooner Sydney Packet. He captained the ship and gathered intelligence on whaling operations in New Zealand. Mr Jones also gave him cash which he had the freedom to invest in business opportunities as they arose. Other able and trusted employees included Captain John Ward, Captain James Malcolm, engineer John Darling and clerk, and later right-hand-man, James Mills.
The other observation suggests Mr Jones' deep attachment to his wife, Sarah. Mr Farquhar noted that the decline in Mr Jones' health coincided with her death in 1864. He died five years later, having never fully recovered, Mr Farquhar says.
Both his ability to pick and trust able men and his ill-health play a part in Mr Farquhar's second major discovery.
Mr Jones completed his will only three months before dying of kidney failure.
The will, to which Mr Farquhar was given access, is ''tremendously detailed'', he says.
Knowing his time was short, it became a final written record of his aspirations for his business affairs and an attempt to ensure his vision was realised.
It was known that Mr Jones had shipping interests in and around Otago Harbour. It is also recognised that some of his former employees went on to found the globally significant Union Steam Ship Company. But what Mr Farquhar has uncovered is the way the dying Mr Jones included in his will the mechanism for that to happen.
Mr Farquhar estimates Mr Jones' estate was worth more than 96,000 (about $11 million today). His will provided for the division of his extensive land and property holdings between his children. But his Harbour Steam Company was to be handled differently.
His trustees were given the freedom to manage his ''steam vessels, lighters and other ships or vessels'' as they saw fit, with the stated ''liberty'' to ''postpone for such time as they shall think fit ... the sale of my shares and interests'' in the ships.
''When it came to shipping, Jones clearly intended that there was to be no rushed sale of the assets,'' Mr Farquhar says.
''The wording was designed to ensure that the Harbour Steam Company would continue and expand in the manner that he and James Mills had envisaged.''
The 21-year-old Mr Mills was made a trustee.
''For Mills to be designated a trustee of the estate ... not only indicated something special in the man, but also showed Jones' uncanny ability to recognise Mills' organising ability and potential,'' Mr Farquhar says.
Under Mr Mills' leadership Harbour Steam did expand. Then, in 1873, Mills issued the first prospectus for the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand Ltd. The assets of Harbour Steam were later sold to the Union Steam Ship Company.
''While James Mills established the Union Company and headed the management for 38 years, there is little doubt that his association with John Jones in the 1860s was extremely beneficial in providing him with the opportunity to gain experience, understanding and the leadership skills necessary to manage a shipping company,'' Mr Farquhar says.
Two of Jones' other trusted men, Captain Malcolm and Mr Darling, also went on to play roles with the Union Company.
Mr Farquhar's argument is compelling.
''The nucleus of small steamers trading out of Otago Harbour enabled [Jones'] trustees to establish the Union Steam Ship Company which, within the space of a few years, became the largest shipping company in the southern hemisphere, remaining in business for 124 years until its final demise in 1999.''
Mr Farquhar hopes the surprising new information packed into his slim 65-page book will help generate a deeper and fuller appreciation of Dunedin's first multimillionaire. It is telling that Mr Farquhar steadfastly refuses to call him by his popular moniker, Johnny Jones.
''I couldn't find any published references to `Johnny' Jones during his lifetime,'' he says.
''I'm just trying to give him ... the degree of respect his standing in the community and his business skills deserved.''
