Captain John Dibbs (8 November 1790 – 1872) was a master mariner prominent during 1822–1835 in the seas around the colony of New South Wales, New Zealand and the Society Islands (now part of Tahiti). Dibbs was master of the colonial schooner Endeavour 1822–1824, the brig Haweis 1824–1827 and the barque Lady Blackwood 1827–1834. He is credited as the European discoverer of Rarotonga and several other islands.http://www.findingnz.co.nz Other islands are Mitiero and Mauke. Most of his voyages involved the transporting of missionaries, trade, whaling and seal hunting. He was believed for over 170 years to have disappeared at sea in 1835. He was the father of Sir George Dibbs, a pre-Federation Australian politician, Sir Thomas Dibbs, an Australian banker, and John Campbell Dibbs, a successful Sydney businessman.
Early years
Very few verifiable facts are known. Dibbs was bornRegister of St Andrews baptisms 1739–1803. John Dibbs was born in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland on 8 November 1790 to John Dibbs (Shoemaker in St Andrews) and Elizabeth Simpson and Baptised on 14 November by Dr Adamson. Witnesses were James Greig and Thomas Aikman. and educated in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland. His parents were John Dibbs and Elizabeth Simpson and he was one of several children. His father, uncle and grandfather served in the military prior to his birth.
Maritime training
It is very likely he trained as a midshipman through the Marine Society around 1806. The East India Company College (Hertford Heath, near Hertford) started in 1806, and trained 16- to 18-year-olds, and if so Dibbs would have been one of the earliest intakes of students. He would have graduated to the East India Company Maritime Service in 1808. His activities 1808–1818 are unknown, but there are two general possibilities.
In 1808 at age 18, he graduates and becomes eligible for posting as a midshipman. Reportedly 25% of Scottish males served in the military between 1792 and 1815, so it is possible (given his father's and grandfather's military service) that Dibbs joined the Royal Navy that was then involved with the War of 1812 and Napoleonic Wars. After Napoleon's final defeat in 1815 at Waterloo the British economy went into recession, and there were thousands of ex-navy seamen out of work.
There is however no record of a Lieutenant Dibbs (or variant spellings) in the Royal Navy.Navy List, site containing over 11,000 names of commissioned Royal Navy officers during the Napoleonic Wars (1793–1815)
The idea that Dibbs was in the Royal Navy comes from a story first published in 1865'The Leisure Hour' magazine, 1865, reprinted in the Religious Tract Societypublication, undated, but believed to be about 1885, and elsewhere, https://archive.org/details/adventuresashore00reliiala. The vessel is named as the Lady Mary, but this would appear to be the Lady Blackwood as this is the ship Dibbs sailed back to England in 1829. If so, this is written by a child passenger on the Lady Blackwood, and is in all likelihood much embellished with the retelling many years later, hence the wrong ship name and other details. The Lady Blackwood returned to Sydney in March 1830, and yet there is no mention of this pirate adventure reported in the Sydney Gazette, nor in a letter dated 18 March 1830 (original in the Mitchell Library, Sydney) by Sophia Dibbs to a friend. detailing an 1828 voyage to England in a ship, the Lady Mary, under the command of a Captain Dibbs, a former Royal Navy lieutenant, and how he outwitted pirates off the coast of Brazil.
Merchant Marine officer grade promotions usually required a two-year tour at sea. Hence it is reasonable to assume that ... John graduated from midshipman to 6th officer about 1810. John is promoted to 5th officer about 1812. John is promoted to 4th officer about 1814. John is promoted to 3rd officer about 1816.
Scottish immigration to Canada peaked in 1819."The Scottish Pioneers of Upper Canada, 1784–1855", Lucille H. Campey (2005) . p.153-155 Glengarry and Beyond Dibbs is listed as the master of the Rothiemurchus, a ship rated at 322 tons owned by John Watson & Co, Leith, in March 1818. The Rothiemurchus made trips to Quebec in 1816 and 1817 (John was probably 1st officer), again in March 1818, and was wrecked in September 1818Caledonian Mercury 10 October 1818: "The Rothiemurchus, Dibbs, of and from Leith to Petersburgh, was driven on shore on Gothland 15th ult. and it was feared would not be got off. The materials, &c. expected to be saved." in the Baltic on her way in ballast to St. Petersburgh, after leaving Leith on 3 September 1818. She ended up on the Naas Reef, near Wisby, Gotland, when "driven on shore" on 15 September.
The vessel last appeared in the Lloyd's Registers in 1818, but she does not feature between 1812 and 1815, and part of the explanation is that this was not the name under which she originally sailed. Previously launched and known as The Bell of London, she was evidently owned by the Admiralty as a supply vessel or transport but she was advertised as up for sale prior to the Congress of Vienna and Wellington's subsequent campaign in Europe.Caledonian Mercury, 5 March 1815 there appears the following: "By Authority of the Right Honourable the Judge of The High Court of Admiralty. On Wednesday the 22d day of March 1815, there is to be exposed to public roup [auction] and sale, before the said Judge, at Edinburgh, within the Ordinary Court place, at two o'clock afternoon, The Ship or Vessel sometime called THE BELL OF LONDON, now the ROTHIEMURCHUS, With her haill [whole] furniture and apparelling, conform to inventory, as presently lying in the harbour of Cromarty, which ship was built at Kingston Port, in Elgin, and launched in the year 1812, and admeasures per register 315 30–94th tons, and is then to be set up at the sum of L.4200 14s. 3d. Sterling. The conditions of sale, and inventory of the said Ship or Vessel, together with the certificate of registry, are to be seen at the Admiralty Office, Parliament Square, or in the hands of Mr John Peat, one of the Procurators of Court, any awful [sic] day betwixt and the time of sale."
This sale did not result in a buyer, and "the Rothiemurchus of London" was re-advertised as for sale in Edinburgh on 18 October 1815, and was now "presently lying in the harbour of Leith", although her former name was no longer mentioned. This time she was "set up at the sum of three thousand pounds Sterling", presumably the reserve price. Again she did not sell, and was again advertised for sale on 8 November, this time set up at £2500. By 26 February 1816 "the New Ship Rothiemurchus" had indeed found a new master, George Watson, and was advertised as ready to receive goods, and bound for Quebec in early April.
Dibbs joined the in Leith, Scotland, as 2nd officer in 1820. The Westmoreland (Captain Potton) transported immigrants and cargo from Leith to South Africa, then to Sydney via Hobart, the Bay of Islands in New Zealand and Tahiti. She was one of 26 immigrant ships that embarked some 4000 persons under the Albany Settlement Scheme of 1820,http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=timothy-johns-the-1820-settlement-scheme-to-south-africa\ describes in detail the concept, organization, pitfalls and results of this scheme. the aim being to settle them in South Africa. On the Westmoreland were Rev. Thomas Kendall, the Maori chieftains Waitkato and Hongi Hika, to whom King George IV had given a suit of armour. While in England Hongi Hika had also negotiated a large quantity of muskets and ammunition for land from the French adventurer Baron Charles de Thierry who shipped them to Sydney. These munitions fundamentally changed the balance of power in Maori New Zealand.
Waitkato and Hongi Hika and their armaments were landed in New Zealand in July 1821, and the Westmoreland continued north east to Tahiti for extra cargo and passengers (notably Rev. John Williams, before heading to Sydney.
Arrival in New South Wales
On his arrival in Sydney in 1821 on the Westmoreland Dibbs became acquainted with Robert Campbell Sr. (of the Sydney traders Campbell & Co), his sons, John (20), Robert (18) and Rev. John Williams of the London Missionary Society (LMS) on the incoming voyage from Otaheite (Tahiti) and New Zealand in 1821.
Campbell and Williams offered him command of the schooner Endeavour to trade in the Tahiti region. During this time, while ferring Rev. Williams around the islands, Dibbs became acquainted with René Primevère Lesson and Jules de Blosseville of the French royal corvette Coquille, on a hydrographic expedition. In May 1823, John and Jules de Blosseville, on the Endeavour returned to Maupiti Island to map it for the Coquille expedition. On 25 July 1823, Captain Dibbs (re)discovered Armstrong Island (now called Rarotonga), and nearby islands Mitiero and Mauke.
In March 1824, the Russian Hydrographic Service mission under Otto von Kotzebue stayed in Otaheite for 10 days, and met with Dibbs.In "A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1" https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25693/ he mentions "...the ship possessed by the Queen. This is commanded by an Englishman, and a part of the crew is also English. It was just returned from a voyage among the Society Islands, where it had been to collect tribute, and was preparing to carry a cargo of cocoa-oil, stowed in thick bamboo-canes, to Port Jackson. From the Captain, who visited me, I gained much information concerning the present state of affairs in these seas.". This is of course Dibbs and the Endeavour. The rest of the crew were Tahitians.
Dibbs was also present in Otahiete for the coronation of King Pomare III on 21 April 1824, before heading to Sydney with cargo and a group of missionaries, notably George Bennet and Daniel Tyerman.
On 16 July 1824 on the voyage to Sydney from Tahiti, the crew and passengers stopped in Whangaroa Harbour, near where a Wesleyan mission was located at Kaeo. An altercation with the local Maori Ngāti Pou tribe resulted in an incident where Maori warriors took control of the Endeavour and menaced the crew. The situation was defused by the timely arrival of another Maori chieftain, Ngāti Uru chief Te Ara. The incident was initially described by Rev. Tyerman as a mostly a problem of cultural differences, but in later years the story became a perilous cannibal adventure that defined the Maori (to European readers) as barbarian savages.
The Endeavour finally returned to Sydney in mid August 1824.All shipping dates can be found in the on-line archives of the Sydney Gazette and other colonial newspapers of the time. See http://trove.nla.gov.au. This on-line resource has been invaluable in piecing together Dibbs’s history during 1820–1835, mostly by locating Shipping News references to the Westmoreland, Endeavour, Haweis and Lady Blackwood, and their various captains, placing them in a time line, and drawing inferences and conclusions.
Dibbs was appointed the London Missionary Society Master of Ships for the Pacific station and served in this capacity until 1827.
In March 1825, he was given command of the Campbell & Co brig Haweis (from Captain Jamison) and ferried missionaries around New Zealand and Tahiti, and also traded, until mid-1827.
The Haweis made a voyage to Mauritius (off the east coast of Africa) in early 1827 – April 1827, selling the cargo of sugar in Hobart on the return voyage. The vessel appears to have been under the command of the 1st officer, a Mr. Doyle, as Dibbs was still in Otaheite, and rejoined the Haweis in Hobart.