Rhys Richards

Rhys Richards is a New Zealand historian and ethnographer. He has written extensively on maritime history and Pacific artifacts and art. He has also spoken on these subjects on New Zealand radio and at many conferences and seminars around the world.

He attended the University of Canterbury in Christchurch where he completed a Master of Arts degree. The title of his MA thesis is, An historical geography of Chatham Island (1962). After graduating from university he worked as a career diplomat in the New Zealand Foreign Service. His diplomatic work included postings in New York, Hong Kong, Manila, Geneva, Apia, and Honiara . In retirement he and his wife Margaret live in Wellington, New Zealand. They have three children.

He has written many books, journal articles, chapters in books, book reviews and articles in newspapers. He has also contributed content to online resources, such as The Encyclopedia of New Zealand and the British Southern Whale Fishery website.

In the year 2000, he was presented with the 16th annual L. Byrne Waterman Award for his "outstanding contribution to maritime history," in a ceremony at The Kendall Whaling Museum, Massachusetts.

• Whaling and sealing at the Chatham Islands (1982), Canberra, Roebuck, ISBN 0-909434-12-3
• Which Pakeha ate the last Moa, (1986) Wellington, Paremata Press.
• (editor), Frederick Hunt of Pitt Island, (1990), Petone, New Zealand, Lithographic Services, ISBN 047301128X
• (with R. A. Pierce), Captain Simeon Metcalfe: Pioneer fur trader in the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii and China, 1787-1794, (1991) Kingston, Ontario, Limestone Press, ISBN 0919642373
• (with Jocelyn Chisholm) Bay of Islands shipping arrivals and departures 1803-1840 (1992) Wellington, Paremata Press, ISBN 0-473-01601X
• Samoa's forgotten whaling heritage; American whaling in Samoan waters 1824-1848 (1992) Apia, Western Samoa Historical and Cultural Trust, ISBN 0-473-01607-9
• (editor) David Holmes, My 70 years on the Chatham Islands; reminiscences, (1993), Christchurch, Shoal Bay Press, ISBN 0908704178
• Into the South Seas: The Southern whale fishery comes of age on the Brazil Banks, 1765 to 1812; A review of the whaling activities of American, British, French, Spanish and Portuguese whalemen off Brazil and Patagonia before 1812, (1993) Wellington, Paremata Press & IWC, Brazil, ISBN 0473023873
• United States trade with China 1784-1814, (1994) Salem, Massachusetts, Special Supplement to Vol 54 of The American Neptune, ISSN 0003-0155
• The Foveaux yarns of Yankee Jack; Burr Osborn's adventures in southern New Zealand in 1845, (1995), Dunedin, Otago Heritage Press, ISBN 0908774125
• Murihiku re-viewed: a revised history of southern New Zealand from 1804 to 1844, (1995), Wellington, Lithographic Services, ISBN 0473028379
• (editor, with translation by Lene Knight) Jorgen Jorgenson's Observations on Pacific trade; and sealing and whaling in Australian waters before 1805 (1996) Wellington, The Paremata Press, ISBN 0-473-03971-0
• Honolulu centre of trans-Pacific trade; shipping arrivals and departures 1820 to 1840, (2000), Canberra, Pacific Manuscripts Bureau and the Hawaiian Historical Society, ISBN 0-7315-5210-5
• How many whales were killed in Pacific Forum EEZ's: a short review for Pacific Forum States, (2000), Wellington, R. Richards, ISBN 0473068257
• (with Margaret Richards) Pacific artifacts brought home by American whalemen; a report by Rhys and Margaret Richards for the New Bedford Whaling Museum; Pacific Islands curiosities, objects, artifacts and art in museums in New England and Long Island, (2000), Wellington, Paremata Press & The New Bedford Whaling Museum, ISBN 0473073773
• (editor) The Moriori language of the ancestors on the Chatham Islands: Reo Moriori o nga karapuna o Rekohu (2001), Wellington, Te Taa Haeretahi, the Hand in Hand Press, for the Paremata Press, ISBN 0958201315
• Pakeha around Porirua before 1840: sealers, whalers, flax traders and Pakeha visitors before the arrival of the New Zealand Company settlers at Port Nicholson in 1840, (2002) Wellington, Paremata Press, ISBN 0958201323
• (with Kenneth Roga) Not quite extinct: Melanesian bark cloth ('tapa') from western Solomon Islands; with interpretations by Reuben Lilo; and illustrations by Jackie Frizelle and Virginia Bond Korda, (February 2005, revised & reprinted October 2005), Wellington, Paremata Press, ISBN 0958201323
• Manu Moriori: Human and bird carvings on live Kopi trees on the Chatham Islands, (2007), Wellington, Paremata Press, ISBN 0958201374
• Tahiti and the Society Islands; shipping arrivals and departures 1767 to 1852, (2008) Canberra, Pacific Manuscripts Bureau and Jean-Louis Boglio Maritime Books, ISBN 9780980665307
• Easter Island 1793 to 1861: observations by early visitors before slave raids (2008), Los Osos, California, The Easter Island Foundation, ISBN 9781880636282
• (with Bill Carter) A decade of disasters; the Chatham Islands from 1866 to 1875, (2009), Wellington, Paremata Press, ISBN 9780473154714
• Sperm whaling on the Solanders Ground and in Fiordland; a maritime historian's perspective; NIWA Information Series No.76, (2010), Wellington, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, ISSN 1174-264X
• Sealing in the southern oceans, 1788-1833, (2011), Wellington, Paremata Press, ISBN 9780473164805
• The Austral Islands; history, art and art history, (2012), Wellington, Paremata Press, ISBN 9780473188863
• Headhunters black and white: three collectors in the western Solomon Islands, 1893 to 1914,(2012) Wellington, Paremata Press, ISBN 9780473226794
• Captain Charles Bayley, whaling master, 1813-1875, (2014) Hobart, Navarine Publishing/Roebuck, ISBN 978-0-9923660-2-5
• Foreign visitors to the Cook Islands 1773 to 1840, (2014) Wellington, Paremata Press, ISBN 978-0-9582013-9-1
• Tracking travelling Taonga: A narrative review of how Maori artifacts got to London from 1798, to Salem in 1802, 1807 and 1812, and elsewhere globally up to 1840, (2015) Wellington, Paremata Press, ISBN 9780473331993
• Bold captains: trans-Pacific exploration and trade 1780-1830, Vol 1 & 2, (2017) Wellington, Paremata Press, ISBN 978-0-473-40518-2
• Moriori: origins, lifestyles and language, (2018) Wellington, Paremata Press, ISBN 9780473442026
• (editor, with Graeme Broxam), William McKillop, The last of the sail whalers: whaling off Tasmania and southern New Zealand, (2019) Hobart, Navarine Publishing. ISBN 9780992366070
• 'First Pakehas around Wellington and cook Strait', (unpublished, due mid 2020),

• "Advice upon using American whaling records in New Zealand research," Turnbull Library Record 2 (1) April 1969, pp. 24–28
• (with Enid A. Evans, Shirley Humphries, Hugh M. Laracy and Peter Lawrence) "American whaling records relating to the Pacific Islands," Journal of Pacific History, 5 (1) 1970, pp.151-153
• "American whaling on the Chatham Grounds (viewed from an antipodean perspective)," Historic Nantucket, 18 (2) October 1970, 26-35, & 18 (3) January 1971. Reprinted as a 70-page booklet in June 1971.
• "The journal of Erasmus Darwin Rogers, the first man on Herd Island," Turnbull Library Record, 4 (1) May 1971, 31-43
• "A tentative population distribution map of the Morioris of Chatham Island c1790," Journal of the Polynesian Society, 81 (3) September 1972, pp.350-374
• "Chinese whaling," Oceans (Oceanic Society, California) No.3, 1978, pp. 62–65
• "The Journal of Erasmus Darwin Rogers, first man on Herd Island," The American Neptune, Vol.41, October 1981, pp. 280–305
• "'The Manilla-men and Pacific commerce,"'; Filipino seamen around the Pacific around 1800," Solidarity, (Manila) No.95, 1983, pp.47-57
• "The maritime fur trade; sealers and other residents on St Paul and Amsterdam Islands," The Great Circle, 6 (1&2) April & October 1984, 24-42, 93-109
• "The easternmost route to China and the Robertson Aikman charts," The Great Circle, 8 (1) April 1986, 54-67
• "The easternmost route to China 1787-1792, Part II," The Great Circle, 8 (2) October 1986, 104-116
• "Some changes on Chatham Islands during the last twenty-five years," News and Views (Napier) November 1986, pp. 8–10.
• "The easternmost route to China, Part III," The Great Circle, 9 (1) April 1987, 48-59
• (with R. C. Green & S.B. Best) "Exotic type adzes from Tonga and Western Samoa," Archaeology in New Zealand, Vol 31, 1988, 215-221
• (with Thierry du Pasquier) “Bay whaling off Southern Africa c1785-1805," South African Journal of Marine Science, 8 (1) 1989, pp.231-250
• “On using Pacific records to gain new insights into culture contacts in Polynesia,” The Journal of Pacific History, 43 (3) December 2008, 375-382
• "Indigenous beachcombers: the case of Tapeooe, a Tahitian traveller from 1798 to 1812," The Great Circle, 12 (1) March 1990, 1-14
• "Atoll vulnerability: the storm waves at Tokelau on 28 February 1987, Ocean Wave Society Newsletter, May 1990, 5-9
• "On a surface collection of Western Samoan stone tools," Archaeology in New Zealand, 1 (3) 1990, 132-151
• "The cruise of the Kingston and the Elligood in 1800 and the wreck found on King Island in 1802," The Great Circle, 13 (1) March 1991, 35-53
• "The commercial exploitation of sea mammels at Iles Crozet and Prince Edward Islands before 1850," Scott Polar Research Institute Monograph Number 1, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 1–19
• "An American sealing explorer: Captain Isaac Percival's search for the Nimrod Islands, 1828-1830," The Log of Mystic Seaport, 44 (3) 1992, 59-63
• "Rongotate, Stivers and other visitors to New Zealand before Captain Cook," The Journal of Polynesian Society 102 (1) March 1993, 7-38
• (with Jocelyn Chisholm) "The SAD truth about Bay of Islands shipping 1803-1840," The Great Circle, 15 (1) March 1993, 30-35
• "The whalers in Samoa," Polynesia (Polynesian Airlines), 1 (3) 1993, 47-53
• "The whaleman's riot, Russell, January 1851," Bearings (New Zealand National Maritime Museum) 5 (4) 1993, 38-45
• "The decision to Lotu: new perspectives from whaling records on the sources and spread of Christianity in the Samoas," The Pacific Studies Journal, 17 (1), March 1994, 29-44
• "Charting a trans-Tasman, trans-Pacific route to China," New Zealand Map Society Journal, No 8, 1994, 1-9.
• “'The upland seal’ of the Antipodes and Macquarie Islands: a historian’s perspective,” Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 24 (2) September 1994, 289-295
• "Captain Thomas Rossitier, pioneer of French whaling at Australia and New Zealand," Antipodes (Otago University Journal of French Studies), May 1995.
• "The crew list kept on the London whaleship Mary Ann by Captain William Hingston, patriarch of New Zealand's oldest Pakeha family," Turnbull Library Record, Vol 28, 1995, 79-80.
• "Astoria in 1846: an eye witness account," The Quarterdeck (Columbia River Maritimr Museum), 22 (4) Autumn 1996.
• "Astoria in 1846: Sharkville," The Quarterdeck, 23 (1), Winter 1997.
• "Captain George Hempleman, 1799-1880, master whaleman," Records of the Canterbury Museum, Vol 11, 1997, 65-80.
• "Southern right whales: original global stocks," International Whaling Commission workshop on Right Whale Stocks, Cape Town, March 1998, Document SC/M98/RW31.
• “A ‘lost galleon?’ The Spanish wreck at Taumako,” The Journal of Pacific History, 34 (1) 1999, 123-128
• "Honolulu and whaling on the Japan Grounds." The American Neptune, 59 (3) 1999, 189-197.
• "A two piece wooden fish hook and a new narrative, from Tokolau in 1825," Journal of the Polynesian Society, 110 (3), 2000, 289-299.
• "Kimbo stone figures from the Western Solomon Islands," Journal of Pacific Arts, Vol 23/24, 2001, 103-112.
• "Pacific whaling 1820-1840: port visits, 'Shipping Arrivals and Departures' comparisons, and sources," The Great Circle 24 (1) April 2002, 25-39.
• “Southern right whales: a reassessment of their former distribution and migration distribution and migration routes in New Zealand waters, including on the Kermadac grounds,” Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 32 (3) September 2002, 355-377
• “New market evidence on the depletion of southern fur seals 1788-1833,” New Zealand Journal of Zoology,30 (1) 2003, 1-9
• "Menepo: the recent evolution of a traditional wood sculpture from Santa Cruz in the Solomon Islands," Tuhinga (Te Papa Tongarewa Museum, Wellington, NZ) Vol 14, 2003, pp.35-40.
• "Re-viewing early American trade with China 1784-1833," Mains'l Haul (Maritime Museum of San Diego), 39 (2) 2003, 14-19.
• "Canadian whaling in the Pacific Ocean 1834-1850," Argonauta, 20 (3) July 2003, 20-34.
• "Joseph Thoms: sealer, whaler and trader of Porirua," The Stockade (Karori Historical Society, Wellington) No.36, November 2003, pp.16-26
• (with Kenneth Roga), "Barava; land titles deeds in fossil shell from the western Solomon Islands," Tuhinga (Te Papa Museum, New Zealand) Vol 15, 2004, pp.17-26.
• "The earliest foreigner visitors and their massive depopulation of Rapa-iti from 1824 to 1830," Journal de la Societe des Oceanistes (Paris), 118 (1) 2004, pp.3-10
• "The meaning of the name Karore or Karori," The Stockade, (Wellington) Vol 37, 2004, p.4
• "Who taught Pomare to read? Unpublished comments by a missionary surgeon on Tahiti from May 1807 to October 1810, and journal entries by an able seaman in Tahiti in 1811,' Journal of Pacific History, 40 (1) June 2005, pp.105-116.
• "Whale teeth artifacts in the western Solomon Islands," Tuhinga (Te Papa Museum of New Zealand) Vol 17, 2006, pp.69-79
• "Nathaniel Aimes: a Bostonian in the Antarctic in 1820-21," International Journal of Maritime History, Vol XIX, June 2007, pp.271-285
• "Canadian whaling in the Pacific: Part II, Argonauta, (Canadian Nautical Research Society) Vol XXV, No.1, January 2008, pp.10-12
• (with Burr Osburn), "A Yankee whaleman's childhood: Burr Osborn and farm life in Weston, Conn. 1826 to 1844,'" Connecticut History Review, 47 (1) Spring 2008, pp.96-106.
• "Maori names for marine animals: 'Nga ingoa o Nga Tamariki o Tinirau'," Tuhinga, , Vol 19, pp.1-6.
• "The trans-Pacific odyssey of the ill-fated brig Cossack of Boston, 1815-1823," The Great Circle, 30 (1) March 2008, pp.41-51.
• “On using Pacific records to gain new insights into culture contact in Polynesia before 1850,” The Journal of Pacific History, 43 (3) December 2008, 375-382
• "Shand's 'missing Moriori manuscript' recovered, though now partly in Maori," Journal of the Polynesian Society, 117 (4), December 2008, pp.399-404.
• "Les Tahitiens, Eternels Grand Voyageuers," Tahiti Pacific Magazine, 19 (220) Aout 2009, pp. 15–19.
• "Sir William Crowther's Hobart whaling collection in context," The Great Circle, 31 (1) 2009, pp.59-65.
• "The pirates at Tahiti in 1822: two unpublished letters by Samuel Henry," Journal de la Societe des Oceanistes, Vol 129, 2009, pp. 301–304.
• "Ceramic imitation arm rings for indigenous trade in the Solomon Islands 1880 to 1920," Records of the Auckland Museum, 2010, Vol 47, pp.93-109.
• “Past and present distributions of southern right whales (eubalaena australis),” The New Zealand Journal of Zoology, 36 (4) 2009, 447-459
• "Ma'ohi (Tahitian) travellers before 1825 and new insights from shipping lists," Journal Societe des Oceanistes, (Paris) Vol 130-131, 2010, pp.236-239.
• "Towards an estimate of whale stocks in Kermadac waters before sail whaling began," DEEP: talks and thoughts celebrating diversity in New Zealand's untouched Kermadacs, PEW Environmental Group, August 2010, pp. 85–88.
• "A probable Lapita site found in the Western Solomon Islands?" Archaeology in Oceana, January 2013, 46 (3) pp.139-140.
• "Kesa and other Tridacna shell valuables from Choiseul," chapter 2, in, Ben Burt and Lissant Bolton (editors) (2014), The things we value: cultures and histories in the Solomon Islands, London, British Museum and Sean Kingston. ISBN 978-1-9077-7421-8
• (with Klaus Barthelmess, Eric C. Rust and Susan Lebo), German sail whaling in the Pacific, 1837-1868, Deutsche Segler auf Walfang in Pazifik, pp. 1–9, 2012.
• "Austral Island 'paddles': their main motifs and a global search for their prototype," Oceanic Art Society, 2012, 17 (3) pp. 5–7.
• The Chatham Islands: Islands of New Zealand, Te Ara, The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, 2012
• "Austral Island 'paddles'; their primary motifs and a global search," Tribal Art, Winter 2012, XVII-I, Vol 66, pp.106-107
• "A Boston merchant trading for the Dutch in Japan in 1800," Cariolis: Interdisciplinary Journal of Maritime Studies, 3 (2) 2012, pp.15-32.
• "An analysis of motifs on Austral Island 'Paddles'," Bonhams African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian Art, May 15, 2014, New York, Bonhams, pp. 40–44.
• "Whale and seal cargoes landed in London from the South Seas before 1815," in, A.G.E. Jones & Dale Chatwin, Ships employed in the South Seas Trade, 1775-1859, Vol 3, Hobart, Naverine Publishing, 2014, Part IV, pp. 77–106. ISBN 978-0-9923660-1-8
• “Whatever happened to Otaheitan Jem?,” The Journal of Pacific History, 51 (2) June 2016, 205-214
• (with Jocelyn Chisholm) "The whaling career of Captain Robert Newby: A British master whaler in the Pacific c1830 to 1843," The Great Circle 40 (2) December 2018, 122-153.
• “He was a whaler, I think ...,” The New Zealand Genealogist, 29 (374), December 2018.