Black Sheep

Bully Hayes is famous as a charismatic "pirate" of the South Pacific. But most stories gloss over his more heinous crimes: Slavery, sexual assault and the brutal abuse of his crew.

Bully Hayes is a man who made his mark on the Pacific. His image today is as a swashbuckling rogue who swindled his way from China to California, from Apia to Akaroa.

Bully could leap from the floor of a ballroom and kick the ceiling, he captured the notorious corsair Eli Boggs, he was the ringmaster of a circus on the Australian goldfields.

It's a life story that's inspired several books and even one Hollywood movie starring Tommy Lee Jones. But those stories usually skip over the nastier side of Bully Hayes: His brutal treatment of his crew, his career as a slaver, the multiple accusations of rape and paedophilia.

"He had this reputation of being a scoundrel from birth," says maritime historian Joan Druett, author of The Notorious Captain Hayes. "But in those days you could print anything you like, and if it was sensational enough and popular enough - all the other papers would copy it!"

Bully Hayes (real name: William Henry Hayes) was an international criminal celebrity. Through the 1860s and 70s his name appeared in newspapers as far afield as Hawaii and Singapore. Virtually every paper referred to him as "The Notorious Captain Hayes".

Some of the stories printed in the papers were true. For example his astounding capture of the American pirate Eli Boggs - beating him into submission as the pair grappled in the ocean, surrounded by the burning wreckage of Eli's ship. This despite Eli being armed to the teeth - literally! (he'd jumped overboard with a cutlass clamped in his jaws).

Other stories are more dubious and some seem to have been made up by Bully himself. "He liked having this spectacular reputation, and he added to it," Joan Druett explains.

According to one origin story (almost certainly invented by Bully) he was a US Navy Captain on the China station who was Court Martialed after hanging 25 Chinese pirates without a trial.

"But according to what records there are he  18 or 19 years old at the time. Which makes it a bit unlikely he was in charge of a US gunboat," says Joan.

A more credible story is that Bully learned to sale as a merchant on the Great Lakes near his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio.

He is then said to have got a job with the Chinese Navy, but it didn't take long for this position to turn into a criminal enterprise with the aid of another American captain, Ben Pease.

Bully and Pease sailed all around China extorting merchants for "protection" from pirates. "They had a protection racket. They were mobsters," Joan explains…

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In the second of Black Sheep's two part series, we find out how the Prussian mercenary Gustavus von Tempsky went from a relatively famous soldier to an uber-hero of New Zealand's colonial mythology.

One who followed glory's beacon from his boyhood till he fell,

Dying like a valiant soldier, after fighting long and well.

Brief the record, yet it seems like some wild legend or romance;

This is a stanza from "How Von Tempsky Died" an insanely romantic ballad penned by Thomas Bracken nearly 20 years after Major Gustavus von Tempsky was shot dead at the Battle of Te Ngutu o te Manu.

In Bracken's day Von Temspky's fame was only reaching new heights. He had become the great hero of the New Zealand wars who wielded his bowie knife with the same skill as his paintbrush; whose troops worshiped him and whose enemies feared him.

This narrative held sway in New Zealand for nearly a hundred years, the darker side to his story was mostly ignored. In the last 40 years that's started to change.

"He's been called just a bloodthirsty mercenary, a glory hunter and a terrorist," says Andrew Moffat, writer and researcher at Puke Ariki Museum in New Plymouth.

Von Temspky was a deeply contradictory figure, even in his own time. His troops may have loved him but some of his fellow officers despised his self-promotion and political ambition. He may have written critical accounts of atrocities at Ōrākau and Rangiaowhia but he also praised "scorched earth" raids against Māori in Taranaki - and he participated in those raids personally.

For further reading on von Tempsky: G.F. von Tempsky, artist & adventurer / Rose Young; with Heather Curnow and Michael King. 1981

Publisher: Martinborough, N.Z: Alister Taylor, 1981

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He was larger than life, a warrior, artist and musician whose legend has only grown since his death during the New Zealand Wars in 1868.... but Gustavus von Tempsky had a dark side.

Gustavus von Tempsky is the star of a hundred songs and stories. The mercenary and adventurer whose Māori enemies called him Manu-rau - "a hundred birds". He was beloved by his troops, the famous Forest Rangers, who refused to fight under any other man after he died.

And it's not all guts and glory, von Tempsky was a talented artist, singer, musician and author whose romantic, heroic image made him the most popular man in the colony back in the 1860s.

His death at the Battle of Te Ngutu o Te Manu only heightened his legend. Thomas Bracken (author of NZ's national anthem) composed a ballad praising his legacy in the most overblown terms imaginable. Newspapers described his death as an "irreparable loss". Generations of New Zealanders have grown up with an image of von Tempsky as the uber hero of our colonial history.

But the real Gustavus von Tempsky was a deeply contradictory figure even in his own time.

His troops may have hero worshiped him but some fellow officers thought he was a self-aggrandising braggart who played on his public image to curry favour with politicians and further his career.

His writings may have criticised the British army's mistreatment of Māori wounded and civilians, but those writings also praised indiscriminate scorched earth tactics against "rebel" and "loyalist" Māori alike.

Von Tempsky had a dark side, and until relatively recently that side of his story was mostly ignored...

For further reading on von Tempsky: G.F. von Tempsky, artist & adventurer / Rose Young; with Heather Curnow and Michael King. 1981

Publisher: Martinborough, N.Z: Alister Taylor, 1981

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Why do some historians think an NZ-born traitor was "instrumental" in the Japanese victory in Singapore during WWII? And why is there such a mystery surrounding the Reefton boy who seemingly spied for the Japanese?

Why do some historians think an NZ-born traitor was "instrumental" to the Japanese victory in Singapore during WWII?

In part 1 we heard how Patrick Heenan, a NZ-born captain in the British Army, came to despise his comrades and eventually decided to act as a spy for the Japanese. In this episode Black Sheep uncovers the mystery surrounding that treason, allegations of a cover-up, and the "watery grave" which ends Patrick Heenan's story.

The Spy

Once he arrived in Malaya Patrick Heenan got a job as an intelligence officer, working as a liaison between the Army and the Air Force

Almost from the moment that transfer was approved, he began to act suspiciously. His commanding officer, Major France, wrote a memoir outlining some of his dodgy behaviour.

"I had discovered that during my absence  had done two outrageous things:

Firstly he had taken a party of my troops on ground exercises and on these he had taken photographs of all the junctions and crossroads into Thailand, whilst the signposts were still in position. These would of course have been removed in event of a war.

Secondly, whilst I was away he had gone to the Station Commander and persuaded him that he had my permission to see my documents - highly secret and kept in my Command safe." - Major France, Odd Man Out: The Story Of The Singapore Traitor

Actually, Major France said Heenan tried to get into his safe and access those secret documents not once, but twice.

Professor Brian Farrell says that's totally astonishing. "You do this and you're some sort of fast-talking charmer who has the gift of the gab and you maybe get away with it once ... but twice? You have to ask what was going on here."

"Why didn't  as a measure of sheer prudence have this guy behind bars right away? You're not in a position to take chances, you're in the middle of a war which is going very badly!"

To give Major France some credit, he did try to get to the bottom of Captain Heenan's suspicious behaviour by searching his room…

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What drove a boy from Reefton to turn against his comrades in World War Two? How was a former boxing and swimming champion recruited as an agent of Imperial Japan? It's a story still shrouded in mystery more than 70 years later.

What drove a boy from Reefton to turn against his comrades in World War Two? How was a former boxing and swimming champion recruited as an agent of Imperial Japan? Did the British military conceal the true extent of the damage he did to the Allied war effort? And how did he meet his end in what a mysterious postcard described as a "watery grave"?

These questions, and many more, surround the murky mystery of Captain Patrick Heenan, one of the least understood traitors of the Second World War.

The Reefton Bastard

When Heenan was born, Reefton was a dilapidated place. It was 1910 and the gold rush days were over. Patrick was illegitimate, nobody knows who his real father was. He was named after an Irish Catholic called George Heenan who his mother, Annie, married shortly after his birth.

The family emigrated to Burma (Myanmar) in 1912 and shortly after arriving, George died. Annie was left to raise Patrick alone for the next ten years.

Maybe it was in these years that Heenan first started to develop a hatred for the British Empire. Colonial Burma was a deeply racist and repressive place, the famous author George Orwell worked as a policeman in Burma at the same time Heenan lived there and drew on that experience for one of his books.

"You hear your Oriental friends called 'greasy little babus', and you admit, dutifully, that they are greasy little babus. You see louts fresh from school kicking grey-haired servants. The time comes when you burn with hatred of your own countrymen, when you long for a native rising to drown their Empire in blood." - George Orwell, Burmese Days

When Heenan turned 12 he and his mother relocated to England where Annie paid for her son to attend the prestigious Cheltenham College.

Heenan's school years were deeply unhappy. Old school-mates said he was both a bully himself and a victim of bullying.

" didn't want  to fall down that socio-economic ladder," explains Brian Farrell, a military historian at Singapore National University. "So there was some scrimping and saving to send him to schools that she really couldn't afford. As a result he was always the kid with the oldest, tattiest, most out of date shoes and clothes.  got teased about it a lot."

Racism In The Ranks

Heenan's social isolation continued after he left school and joined the British Indian Army as a junior office…

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Amy Bock was a criminal "supreme in her cleverness". Her most famous con saw her pose as a man for 15 weeks and marry the daughter of her landlord. Nobody has ever been able to explain what motivated her lifetime of fraud and scams.

Detective Henry Hunt knocks on the door of Percy Redwood, a wealthy sheep farmer on an extended holiday at Nugget Point on the Catlins Coast.

Over the last few months, Percy had made a lot of friends in town, in fact, he just recently married a local woman called Agnes Ottaway.

The door opens. Percy, a very short man, told his friends he used to be a jockey in his younger days. But that was a lie, pretty much everything Percy told his friends was a lie.

"The game is up, Amy," said Detective Hunt.

Percy's shoulders slump. "I see you know it all," he said... or rather, she said.

Percy was not really a wealthy sheep farmer and former jockey. He was a persona invented by Amy Bock, the most prolific con-artist in New Zealand history.

"A Woman Bridegroom, Exploits Of An Adventuress, An Extraordinary Story"

"In Man's Attire, A Woman's Escapade"

"A Marvellous Masquerade, A Woman Dressed As A Man Marries A Port Molyneax Girl."

"The Champion Crook of the Century"

This is just a small sample of the scandalised headlines which filled the national newspapers after Amy's scam was revealed. The papers delved into her old court records, they interviewed her childhood friends and trawled through older newspaper clippings.

What they uncover is a lifetime of scams, frauds and lies going all the way back to Amy's childhood in the rural Australian town of Sale, a few hundred kilometres east of Melbourne.

"It's In My Blood"

Amy came from a respectable family in Sale, her father ran a successful photography business which helped him make connections with the movers and shakers in town.

But there was a tragedy at the heart of the Bock family. Amy's mother suffered from a serious mental illness.

" would have very manic episodes and then episodes of melancholia. So probably what we would think of now as manic-depressive ," said Dr Jenny Coleman, author of Mad or Bad: the life and exploits of Amy Bock.

When Amy was ten years old her mother was locked up in a lunatic asylum. Amy never saw her again. She died three years later.

It was around this point people started to have concerns about Amy's mental health. She began telling stories and acting out in bizarre ways. One time she bought a load of books under her father's name and just gave them away to random people in town…

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The story of Horatio Robley continues... How did a man once dubbed a "predator of culture" for his collection of preserved Māori heads become better known as a "friend of the Māori"?

In Part 1 of this story, we heard how Horatio Robley came to New Zealand as a young officer in the British Army and witnessed the devastating British defeat at Gate Pā. In Part 2, we hear how the Tauranga War ended, and how Robley became famous as a collector of Mokomokai, preserved Māori heads.

A few months after Gate Pā, Māori and British came to blows again at Battle of Te Ranga. This time the British caught Tauranga Māori before they could finish building their Pā, and the half-dug trenches became a mass grave for 108 warriors.

Within weeks a peace was negotiated, but Robley and his fellow soldiers stayed on in Tauranga for several more months. In those months, Robley had a chance to become much more intimately involved in Māori culture ...and with one Māori woman in particular.

Horatio Te Ropere

With the spectre of war lifted, Robley doubled down on his artwork. He painted spectacular watercolours of Tauranga landscapes and took portraits of prominent Māori in the region, including some leaders of the Ngāi Te Rangi tribe who had participated in the Battle for Gate Pā.

Tauranga Māori clearly respected Robley's skill as an artist and eventually they allowed him to sketch some incredibly intimate and sacred moments.

"There was a gradual building of rapport," explains Tim Walker, pointing out a painting Robley did at a tangi (Māori funeral rite). "Astonishing for a Pākeha  to be sitting in that context."

Somewhere in the middle of this, Robley formed a relationship with a Māori woman - and not just any woman: Herete Mauao, daughter of one of the highest ranking chiefs in the entire Bay of Plenty region.

"Some kaumātua have told me she was presented to Robley as an act of respect for his mana," Walker says. "It seems hard to understand in one way because he was only an itinerant soldier who's part of a colonising force."

However it began, Robley and Herete's relationship became serious very quickly. Herete gave birth to a son, named Hamiora Tu Ropere after his father.

But Robley didn't stay with his family for long. After just 20 months, the 68th regiment were redeployed away from New Zealand. Robley would never see Herete or Hamiora ever again.

However, he maintained a deep and sometimes deeply problematic connection with Aotearoa for the rest of his life.

Headhunter…

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Horatio Robley witnessed the most famous battle of the New Zealand Wars, he fathered a child with the daughter of a sworn enemy, his sketching helped end a war, his book helped save the art of Maori tattooing... But mostly he's famous for his grotesque collection of nearly 40 human heads.

Horatio Robley witnessed the most famous battle of the New Zealand Wars, he fathered a child with the daughter of a sworn enemy, his sketching helped end a war and his book helped save the art of Māori tattooing.

But mostly he's famous for his grotesque collection of nearly 40 human heads.

A Wall of Heads

If you type Horatio Robley's name into a search engine you'll find a seriously disturbing image (a censored version appears above).

In the foreground is Robley, dressed in a fancy suit and sporting an enormous handlebar moustache. In one hand he holds a mere (Māori club) and behind him... 35 mokomokai - preserved Māori heads.

The heads are in various states. Some are well preserved; you can still clearly make out their facial features and the beautiful curved lines of their tā moko (facial tattoos). Others are harder to look at; the lips are drawn back from the teeth, mummified skin clings to the shape of the skull.

Most disturbingly, one head in the bottom right corner of the photo clearly belongs to a very young child, maybe even a baby.

For the better part of a century this image has defined Horatio Robley. It's hard to look at a white guy sitting in front of a wall of Māori heads and see anything other than a monster.

"When  were younger he was described as a macabre predator of culture," says Haami Piripi, a senior member of the mokomokai repatriation team for Te Papa museum.

But there's a twist in this story.

"Over time, as we've got to know him more and understand his motivation, we see that he really became a friend of the Māori."

So how do we go from a headhunting "predator of culture" to a "friend of the Māori"? That's a fascinating story in of itself. It's mostly been driven by the research of Tim Walker, a former curator at Te Papa who wrote his thesis on Robley in the 1980s.

"That's the image that people have of him," says Walker, gesturing to the gruesome black and white photo of Robley posing with his collection. "I think what we see generally is people's projections of their own sense of what was going on onto that image."

In Walker's words, Robley was a man "out of time". His motives were often misunderstood in his own day and are even more difficult to decipher from the perspective of 21st century Aotearoa.

Disaster at Gate Pā…

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