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Graphic: An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand 1966.

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This information was published in 1966 in An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock. It has not been corrected and will not be updated.

Up-to-date information can be found elsewhere in Te Ara.

DUELS

Contents


Unnamed Duellists

In the late 1840s two of the Auckland garrison, one of whom may have been Captain Moir (see New Zealand Military Journal, Vol. 1, p. 44), fought a duel near the Bastion. One died of the wounds received, but the affair was hushed up and the victim's headstone in the Symonds Street Cemetery, Auckland, states that he died of fever.

Soon after the Maori Wars, two ex-Army officers fought a duel with pistols at a military settlement near the Kaipara Harbour. The dispute arose over an incident at a card party and one of the duellists sustained a small shoulder wound.

At Auckland, on Friday, 12 July 1935, a duel with swords was fought between a former English Army officer and a foreigner, said to have been a Russian, who made a grossly insulting remark about King George V. After fighting for a few minutes, the Englishman ran his sword through his opponent's arm and the affair ended.

by John Sidney Gully, M.A., DIP.N.Z.L.S., Assistant Chief Librarian, General Assembly Library, Wellington.

  • Centennial History of the N.Z. Pacific Lodge, No. 2, Weston, R. C. G. (1942)
  • Southern Cross, 16 May 1870
  • N.Z. Herald, 1 Jun, 8 Jun, 1895.