The Boyd Massacre occurred in 1809 when Māori residents of Whangaroa Harbour in northern New Zealand killed and ate between 66 and 70 people as revenge for the whipping of a young Māori chief by the crew of the sailing ship Boyd. This was reputedly the highest number of Europeans killed by Māori in a single event, and the incident is also one of the bloodiest instances of cannibalism on record. In retribution, European whalers attacked the island pa of Chief Te Pahi about 60 km south-east, in the possibly mistaken belief that he ordered the killings. About 60 Maori and one European died in the clash. News of the events delayed the first missionary visits to the country, and caused the number of shipping visits to fall to "almost nothing" over the next few years.
Read more about Boyd Massacre: Background, Killings, European Survivors, Destruction of The Boyd, Rescue, Aftermath, Cultural References
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“We all want to be happy, and we’re all going to die.... You might say those are the only two unchallengeably true facts that apply to every human being on this planet.”
—William Boyd (b. 1952)
“It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.”
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