Edward Weller (whaler)

The Weller brothers, Englishmen of Sydney and Otago, New Zealand, were the founders of a whaling station on Otago Harbour and New Zealand’s most substantial merchant traders in the 1830s.

The brothers, Joseph Brooks (1802-1835), George (1805-1875) and Edward (1814-1893), founded their establishment at Otago Heads in 1831, the first enduring European settlement in what is now the City of Dunedin.

Members of a wealthy land-owning family from Folkestone, Kent, they moved serially to Australia, partly to alleviate Joseph Brooks Weller’s tuberculosis. Joseph Brooks left England on 20 October 1823. He arrived in Hobart on 4 February 1824 and then went to Sydney. After 18 months he returned to England, and left there for good on 1 January 1827 accompanied by Edward. In the meantime George had already left England and arrived in Australia in March 1826. and had bought the Albion. By 1830 Joseph Brooks, Edward, George and his new wife, Elizabeth (formerly Barwise), their parents, Joseph (1766-1857) and Mary (née Brooks) (b.1779), and two sisters, Fanny (1812-1896) and Ann (1822-1887), were all in Sydney.

Joseph Brooks Weller interested himself in flax and timber trading at the Hokianga. In 1831 he called at William Cook’s shipbuilding settlement at Stewart Island/Rakiura to commission a vessel before visiting Otago in the Sir George Murray, reaching an agreement with Tahatu and claiming territory for William IV. He returned in the Lucy Ann with goods and gear to establish a whaling station, (it is believed with Edward) in November. George and his wife came too, or arrived soon after.

The Wellers continued to trade in flax and spars, maintaining operations at the Hokianga even as they developed Otago. At that time and throughout the decade they were the only merchants regularly trading from one end of New Zealand to the other. In January 1832, Joseph Brooks Weller bought land including the sites of the modern cities of Auckland and North Shore and part of Rodney District. A fire soon destroyed the Otago station, but it was rebuilt. Edward was kidnapped by Māori in the far north and ransomed. Whale products started flowing from Otago in 1833 where Joseph Brooks based himself and European women went to settle.

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