Richard Driver was a notable character in early Dunedin and the first pilot in Otago Harbour. He was born in Bristol in 1812 and went to sea at the age of 14. Whaling ships took him to the Pacific and he landed in Otago as second mate on an American vessel, the John and Edward, in 1839. The family tradition is that his party were in search of water at Whareakeake (Murdering Beach) when they came under attack from local Māori. Driver's life was spared at the insistence of Motoitoi, daughter of Kahuti, who threw her cloak over him to claim him as her own. This is a standard motif in stories of first encounter relationships, but in fact the era of conflict between Māori and whaler was long past by the time that Driver arrived in Otago.
Driver and Motoitoi lived for a time in a cave at Whareakeake beach and had three daughters together: Maria Catherine, Emma Paerata and Mary Titawa. After Motoitoi died in 1846, Driver subsequently had a son, John Poroki, by his Māori housekeeper. Driver’s Māori daughters all married Europeans and bridged the cultural divide between Māori and Pākehā. They produced many descendants who have been important members of Kāi Tahu Whānui. They include the Tirakatene (Tregerthen) family, three generations of whom have represented Southern Maori in parliament, as well as the noted writer Keri Hulme.
Like many whalers, however, Driver later married a European woman, Elizabeth Robertson, who was a passenger on the Philip Laing. They had 11 children together and there are also large numbers of descendants from this line.
When the first New Zealand Company immigrants arrived at Otago Heads in March 1848, it was Driver and a Māori crew who acted as their pilot through the difficult entrance to the harbour. He fulfilled this role for a number of years and became notorious for his salty tongue and the outrageous stories he peddled to new arrivals. He was a great devotee of Otago, though, telling the immigrants that he would rather be hanged in Dunedin than die a natural death in Wellington. He later moved to Purakaunui and died there in 1897 aged 85.
Richard Driver