Port Pegasus, officially Port Pegasus / Pikihatiti, (formerly South Port) is at the southern end of

Stewart Island Stewart Island ( mi, Rakiura, ' glowing skies', officially Stewart Island / Rakiura) is New Zealand's third-largest island, located south of the South Island, across the Foveaux Strait. It is a roughly triangular island with a total land ar ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. From the 1890s to the 1950s, Port Pegasus was the site of a small

fishing Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fish are often caught as wildlife from the natural environment, but may also be caught from stocked bodies of water such as ponds, canals, park wetlands and reservoirs. Fishing techniques inclu ...

community. There was also a small

tin Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal. Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...

-mining boom in the area in the 1890s. Today, there is no settlement at Port Pegasus, but the location is frequented by tourists, fishermen, hunters, and divers.

History

In 1809, when

William W. Stewart William W. Stewart (c. 1776 – 10 September 1851) was a Scottish sealer and whaler after whom New Zealand's Stewart Island is named. Stewart served in the Royal Navy from 1793 to 1797. In June 1801 he arrived in Port Jackson (Sydney), New South ...

visited and mapped the island that was later named after him, he named the small bay "South Port". Later, it was renamed "Port Pegasus" to commemorate the ''Pegasus'', Stewart's ship. The

brig A brig is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: two masts which are both square rig, square-rigged. Brigs originated in the second half of the 18th century and were a common type of smaller merchant vessel or warship from then until the ...

''Pegasus'' was the former ''Pegaso'', captured at the Peruvian port of Trujillo on 28 July 1807 by the British frigate , commanded by Captain Charles James Johnston, during a cruise against Spanish shipping and ports along the coasts of Spanish America. Johnston dispatched the ''Pegaso'' to

Port Jackson Port Jackson, consisting of the waters of Sydney Harbour, Middle Harbour, North Harbour and the Lane Cove and Parramatta Rivers, is the ria or natural harbour of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The harbour is an inlet of the Tasman Sea (p ...

, where she arrived at the end of October. Submitted to the Court of Admiralty in Sydney, the ''Pegaso'', was condemned as a prize on 24 January 1808 and sold off, renamed ''Pegasus''. A few months later she was acquired by Thomas Moore and in May of that year she was made ready to go on the sealing trade to the southern part of New Zealand. This expedition took place between August 1808 and March 1809, when ''Pegasus'' was commanded by Captain

Eber Bunker Eber Bunker (1761–1836) was a sea captain and pastoralist, and he was born on 7 March 1761 at Plymouth, Massachusetts. He commanded one of the first vessels to go whaling and sealing off the coast of Australia. His parents were James Bunker a ...

. ''Pegasus'' went on a second expedition under the command of Samuel Chase from Port Jackson to London by way of the sealing grounds in southern New Zealand from May 1809 to August 1810: William Stewart was first officer and made charts of the New Zealand coast, including

, which was subsequently named after him. It appears to have been Jules de Blosseville who first applied the name Port Pegasus to South Port, on his 1824 ''Carte de la côte méridionale de l'île de Tawaï-Poénammou (Nouvelle-Zélande)''; Blosseville was an officer on the expedition of the corvette Coquille commanded by

Louis Isidore Duperrey Louis-Isidore Duperrey (21 October 1786 – 25 August 1865) was a French naval officer and explorer. Biography Early life Louis-Isidore Duperrey was born in 1786. Career He joined the navy in 1802, and served as marine hydrologist to Louis Cl ...

. Duperrey's expedition did not visit the southern part of New Zealand but Jules Alphonse Rene Poret de Blosseville compiled several charts of parts of New Zealand including charts of the southern part of the South Island, from information received when the ''Coquille'' called at Sydney. De Blosseville obtained most of his information about southern areas from Captain William Edwardson of the sloop ''Snapper'' but he also questioned captains of sealing vessels regarding New Zealand. Several charts of parts of New Zealand compiled by de Blosseville were included in the atlas dated 1827 published to accompany the account of Duperrey's voyage, ''Voyage autour du monde executé par ordre du Roi sur la corvette La Coquille pendant les années 1822…1825'', Paris, 1826). In the title of ''Carte de la cote meridionale de l'lle de Tawai-Poenammou''... de Blosseville acknowledged the chart was drawn from original work by Captain Edwardson.Brian Hooker, "Some Preliminary Notes on the Original and Revised Issues of the McDonnell-Wyld Chart of New Zealand", ''The Turnbull Library Record,'' vol.16, no.2, 1983, p.114. At the end of the 1970s near the Tin Range the kakapo was re-discovered. Port Pegasus / Pikihatiti is only accessible by boat or by foot via an arduous hiking trail from

Oban Oban ( ; ' in Scottish Gaelic meaning ''The Little Bay'') is a resort town within the Argyll and Bute council area of Scotland. Despite its small size, it is the largest town between Helensburgh and Fort William. During the tourist season, th ...

that was first marked out by Stewart Island ranger

Roy Traill Robert Henry Traill (1 December 1892 – 11 September 1989), generally known as Roy Traill, was a resident and wildlife ranger of Stewart Island in New Zealand. In the course of his work, Traill hiked throughout most of the island and as a result ...

References

External links

Port Pegasus
{{coord, 47, 12, S, 167, 40, E, display=title, region:NZ_type:waterbody_source:GNS-enwiki
J.L. Stokes, ''Chart of Port Pegasus,'' 1849.
Bays of Southland, New Zealand Ghost towns in Southland, New Zealand Landforms of Stewart Island Stewart Island 1890s establishments in New Zealand