NURSE, WILLIAM HUGH (1832-85), served in the Royal Navy. He was appointed in 1852 mate in the Salamander on the East Indies station, and on the outbreak of the Crimean war he served in the Baltic as a lieutenant in the Ajax. In 1855 he was appointed to the Cossack, in which he served in North America and the West Indies. In 1857 Nurse came to New Zealand and took up a cattle station on Lake Te Anau in company with the Hankinsons. Some time later he purchased the Blackwater estate, near Riverton, where he lived for the rest of his life. He was prominent in the movement for the separation of Southland from Otago, and was a member of the Southland Provincial Council for Aparima (1861-67). He was twice deputy-superintendent (1865), and was a member of the executive (1866-67). In June 1868 he was called to the Legislative Council, of which he remained a member until his death (23 May 1885). Nurse was a man of retiring disposition. He spoke seldom either in Parliament or in the local bodies of which he was a member (the Aparima road board and the Wallace county council). He was a justice of the peace and a member of the licensing bench.

Admiralty records; Southland Times, 24 May 1885. Portrait: Parliament House.

Reference: Volume 2, page 68

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