HEBERLEY, JAMES (1809-99) was born at Weymouth. His father, a native of Wurtemberg, Germany, who had been taken prisoner by the British, married and settled in England, where he commanded the brig Nancy. After three years schooling Heberley worked in a ropewalk, and at 11 was apprenticed to the captain of a fishing smack. He ran away and found a post as cabin boy in the Sarah and Margaret, trading between London and Hamburg, and afterwards in the West Indiaman Somersetshire. After many vicissitudes he reached Sydney in the Alexander Henry (1825), and two years later, in the whaler Caroline, put into Bay of Islands.

In 1830 Heberley shipped in the schooner Waterloo for Queen Charlotte Sound, and settled at Te Awaiti, where he engaged in whaling. He had many rough experiences during the last campaigns of the Ngati-Toa against Te Rauparaha. Eventually in 1831 he settled at Port Underwood, where he married a Maori woman (1840). Returning in the Hannah in 1836 from Sydney, where he heard of the proposed English colonisation of New Zealand, he bought land at Port Nicholson (1 Feb 1837). The deeds were not valid. Heberley piloted the Tory into Port Nicholson, and round the coast to Wanganui and Taranaki. While she was at Kaipara he climbed Mount Egmont with Dieffenbach (Dec 1839). He was appointed pilot at Port Nicholson but, the fees being insufficient to maintain him, he moved to the town and engaged in fishing, also continuing his whaling operations. He was drowned at Picton in 1899.

C. A. Macdonald; E. J. Wakefield.

Reference: Volume 1, page 204

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