According to a Wellington urban legend, the notorious Ngāti Toa chief used to pull his waka onshore to have a drink at the city’s oldest pub. Is it true?
Windbag is The Spinoff’s Wellington issues column, written by Wellington editor Joel MacManus. It’s made possible thanks to the support of The Spinoff Members.
The Thistle Inn is a simple but elegant two-storey wooden building on the corner of Mulgrave Street and Kate Sheppard Place, a block over from parliament. The street names have changed, but the pub has stood in the same spot for 184 years. It is the oldest pub in Wellington, the last of the original seven hotels that opened in 1840. It’s also the oldest pub in New Zealand, depending on how you qualify it (the Moutere Inn in Tasman, the Duke of Marlborough Hotel in Russell and the Horeke Hotel in Hokianga all have competing claims). Specifically, the Thistle Inn is the oldest pub still operating from its original location. The first Thistle Inn building was a smaller, one-storey wooden structure. The current building opened in 1866 after the first was destroyed by a fire.
If the walls of the Thistle Inn could talk, they would have countless stories to tell. Generations of notable people have walked through its doors. But in any discussion of the pub’s history, two historical figures loom larger than the rest.
The first is writer Katherine Mansfield. In 1907, at 19, she wrote a short story called Leves Amores about two lesbian lovers. It begins with, “I will never forget the Thistle Hotel. I can never forget that strange winter night.” She doesn’t like the Thistle Inn at first. She describes “revolting, yellow, vine-patterned curtains” and says, “The wallpaper hurt me physically. It hung in tattered strips from the wall.” By the end of the night, as she heads back to her date’s room, the narrator has changed her tune. “She slipped out of her frock and then, suddenly, turned to me and flung her arms round my neck. Every bird upon the bulging frieze broke into song. Every rose upon the tattered paper budded and formed into blossom.”
The second is the notorious Ngāti Toa rangatira and warlord Te Rauparaha, arguably the most powerful chief in New Zealand during his lifetime. A well-known urban legend says he was a regular at the pub, though it’s treated more as a fun story than a true fact. The Thistle Inn’s website describes it: “The story goes that local Māori chief Te Rauparaha would pull up his waka on the shore outside the pub, wander in and order a whisky and no one had the courage to charge him. The story is unsubstantiated.” The government-run website NZ History offers this version: “In the early days Te Rauparaha was said – probably fancifully – to have beached his waka on the foreshore to whet his whistle in the Thistle.” I once followed a historical walking tour by a senior iwi leader who laughed at the idea. “You think the great Te Rauparaha would paddle his waka all the way from Kāpiti just to go to the pub? No chance.”
Today, the Thistle Inn is an upmarket gastropub, but it wasn’t always this way. “It used to be the roughest bar in town,” says general manager and part owner Scott Benton. “It used to get wharfies and railway workers coming in to have a scrap, there were people buying drugs and drinking underage.” Now, the clientele is mostly corporates and public servants.
There’s a framed copy of Mansfield’s story on the wall and a cabinet of antique liquor bottles. Through glass panels in the floor, you can see the original cellar stocked with wooden barrels. I asked Benton if he believes the story about Te Rauparaha. He shrugged, “It’s a cool story.” He doesn’t spend much time thinking about history, he’s mostly focused on the day-to-day of running a busy pub.
Part of the reason the story has survived so long is that it seems like it could be true. Today, the Thistle Inn is 320 metres from the water’s edge, but that wasn’t always the case. Before the 1848 earthquake and the later land reclamations, it stood proudly above the shoreline, the perfect spot to beach a waka. The pub opened in October 1840, and Te Rauparaha died in November 1849, meaning there was a nine-year period where they theoretically could have crossed paths. I asked Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira, the iwi authority for Ngāti Toa Rangatira, if they knew anything, but did not receive any information.
But Te Rauparaha wasn’t the kind of person who could just pop down to the pub unnoticed. He was a larger-than-life figure who terrified Wellington’s early Pākehā settlers. The newspapers wrote about him constantly. They called him “the Napoleon of the southern hemisphere” because he was an ambitious, cunning and ruthless military leader – and because he was short.
He took over the leadership of Ngāti Toa at a time when the the iwi had suffered heavy defeats and were forced to leave their ancestral home of Kāwhia. After a multi-year migration south, Te Rauparaha’s forces conquered the stronghold of Kāpiti Island, defended it in the largest naval battle ever fought in New Zealand waters, and launched a series of brutal raids on the surrounding areas. By the time he signed the Treaty of Waitangi, he effectively controlled everything from Whanganui to Westport, a land area about the size of Sri Lanka or Ireland.
If the story that Te Rauaparaha went to the Thistle Inn is even remotely true, surely there must be some historical evidence.
Was Te Rauparaha ever near the Thistle Inn?
I found records of three visits by Te Rauparaha to Wellington after the Thistle Inn opened. The third visit was as a prisoner of Governor George Grey, leaving two possible occasions when he may have visited the Thistle Inn. Both of those visits happened while he was in his mid 70s.
Te Rauparaha’s first visit to Wellington was on Monday, May 11, 1845. He stayed four nights before heading to the Hutt on Thursday, May 14. “Te Rauparaha has come to Wellington for the first time, we believe, since the settlement was formed,” the Wellington Independent reported. Tensions had been increasing between settlers and some groups of Māori over land claims in the Hutt Valley. Bishop George Selwyn hoped Te Rauparaha could help negotiate peace. It was a fraught situation. The Wellington Independent warned readers “not to flock after Rauparaha as if they had never seen a Māori before”, saying he could achieve more “in one hour without the presence of white men than he would in 10 weeks by the presence of the Pākehā”. Many settlers were afraid it was a trick and would expose their weaknesses. “Te Rauparaha has been here and has seen the defenceless state of the place,” one writer complained. The peace negotiations were unsuccessful; fighting broke out in the Hutt Valley the following year.
This trip is mentioned in A Record of the Life of the Great Te Rauparaha, a biography written by his son, Tamihana Te Raupahara, though it is light on details. Newspaper reports confirm that he rode from Porirua on horseback alongside Bishop Selwyn, guarded by 50 Ngāti Toa warriors walking on foot, half at the front and half at the rear. They would have taken the Old Porirua Road, which ended at Kaiwharawhara, before turning onto Thorndon Quay. On his way to town, Te Rauparaha would have ridden right past the Thistle Inn.
During those four nights, he stayed at the home of Reverend Robert Cole, “whose premises were immediately filled by a crowd of Māori attendants on the chief”. Robert Cole was the pastor at the first St Paul’s Church. There is a plaque marking the site of the original church on parliament grounds, just behind the Beehive. The pastor’s house was located near the church. I couldn’t find an exact address, but it is shown in a painting by Samuel Brees on a hill above The Terrace, probably on Bolton Street. If Te Rauparaha and his 50 warriors needed food or drink during their stay, they could have walked 350 metres to The Thistle Inn.
The Pākehā settlers treated him coldly during his stay in Wellington. “The wretched man has been received with the most perfect expression of contempt, perfect silence,” said a report in the New Zealand Spectator & Cook’s Strait Guardian. If he did indeed go to the Thistle Inn and was treated with perfect silence, could that explain why no one charged him for his drinks?
A pencil sketch of Te Rauparaha by Edward Abbott, considered one of the most accurate depictions of the chief, is dated June 1845. The sketch was almost certainly drawn during this visit to Wellington. According to jury records from that year, Edward Abbot was a clerk who lived on Tinakori Road in Thorndon, just up the hill from the Thistle Inn.
Te Rauparaha’s second visit to Wellington lasted a week, beginning on June 22, 1846. Here’s a report in the New Zealand Spectator & Cook’s Strait Guardian: “On Monday afternoon Te Rauparaha came to Wellington from Porirua in company with Major Arney and Lieut. Pedder. A house has been taken for him by the Superintendent, and during his stay in town, he will be supplied with food at the expense of the Government. A guard has also been placed at his house. His principal object in coming had been a desire to see the Rev O. Hadfield, whom he has not seen for several months, and also have a korero with E Puni and the other Ngatiawa [sic] chiefs.” A follow-up report says, “In an interview with the Te Aro natives, he was very coldly received, as he seems to have left in disgust on the 29th.”
There is no mention of which house Te Rauparaha stayed in during this trip, but Reverend Octavius Hadfield was seriously ill and confined to the home of Wellington magistrate Henry St Hill, which was on Hawkestone Street, about 500 metres from the Thistle Inn.
If Te Rauparaha wanted food or drink from a local establishment on either of these visits, the Thistle Inn wasn’t his only option. Wellington’s bar scene in the 1840s wasn’t what it is today, but there were several other pubs in the area. Is there any particular reason Te Rauparaha would have chosen the Thistle Inn?
Is there a connection?
The Thistle Inn was opened in October 1840 by William Couper, who owned it until the mid to late 1850s. He split his time between the pub and his sheep and cattle farm in Karehana Bay, Porirua. That location immediately jumps out as strange. Te Rauparaha strongly resisted European expansion into Porirua. Couper could not have owned that land unless Te Rauparaha approved it.
The name William Couper does not appear on any immigration records. He had lived in Aotearoa for several years before official British settlement began. The deed of purchase for his farm in Porirua is dated November 6, 1839, almost three months before the first settler ship arrived. The payment, made to a chief listed as Thomas Mirya, was four gallons of rum, 50 pounds of tobacco, 100 pipes, seven shirts, five blankets, four rugs, one wooden chest, one musket, one keg of gunpowder and 20 pounds of shot.
Edward Jerningham Wakefield, one of the early directors of the New Zealand Company’s colonisation scheme, mentions Couper in his book Adventure in New Zealand. Wakefield describes him as “an industrious Scotch carpenter who had left a whaling ship some years before”. In the 1830s, he ran a business mending whaleboats and trading with Māori. He spoke fluent te reo. The book even hints at Couper’s future career as a publican – he’d patched up two old boats and planned to sell them in Wellington and use the proceeds to start a new business “in some line”.
Where did Couper live in the 1830s? Wakefield says he “kept a house on Hiko’s island and was then there”. Today, Hiko’s island is known as Motungārara. It’s one of a pair of small islands just off the southeast coast of Kāpiti island. An 1843 sketch by Richard Taylor shows buildings on both islands. The other island is called Tāhoramaurea – but some older sources refer to it as Te Rauparaha’s island. William Couper and Te Rauparaha were next-door neighbours, not just once but twice – Couper’s farm in Porirua was near Taupō Pā, one of Te Rauparaha’s primary homes in his later years
Throughout the late 1820s and 1830s, Te Rauparaha actively encouraged foreign whaling ships to come to Kāpiti so Ngāti Toa could access the lucrative trade in foreign goods, especially muskets. As a carpenter who could repair European ships, William Couper would have been a valuable drawcard who was placed under the protection of local chiefs.
But that was in the 1830s. Is there any evidence that the two men were still in contact in the mid-1840s when Te Rauparaha could have visited the Thistle Inn?
On April 4, 1846, Te Rauparaha wrote a letter to Rev Hadfield, informing him of a murder committed by some Māori and asking the governor to investigate. Te Rauparaha never learned to read or write, so the letter was written on his behalf by “Mr W Couper“. Te Rauparaha could have asked a local missionary or a literate member of his iwi to write this important letter for him, but he trusted William Couper. After receiving the letter, eight constables trekked to Porirua to meet Te Rauparaha for an interview. Where did that interview take place? At the home of William Couper. The two men had a close, trusting relationship for at least a decade.
What’s the truth?
According to the legend, Te Rauparaha used to pull his waka up on the shore outside the Thistle Inn, order a whisky, and no one dared charge him for his drinks.
One part of that story is definitely not true. Te Rauparaha never arrived on a waka; he rode to Wellington on horseback.
As for whether whisky was his drink of choice, I couldn’t find any clear evidence either way. The best I could find was an article in The Nelson Examiner, which says he was “indulgent in the pleasures of the table”.
But what about the central premise of the story? Did Te Rauparaha ever visit the Thistle Inn?
We know Te Rauparaha spent 11 nights within walking distance of Thistle Inn. He barely knew anyone in town and most Pākehā wouldn’t speak to him. And the publican was someone Te Rauparaha had known for a decade, a longtime friend and ally. Did Te Rauparaha go The Thistle Inn while he was in town to say hello to his old buddy William Couper? I think it is almost certain. It would be more unusual if he hadn’t.
And what about the final part of the story, in which Te Rauparaha didn’t pay for his drinks? I think that’s probably true too. But it wasn’t because no one had the courage to charge him. It was because he was mates with the owner.