Interview: Michael Littlewood talks about William & Tiraha

Michael Littlewood is a retired lawyer, employee benefit consultant, director and academic. He worked in New Zealand, Vanuatu and the United Kingdom. Michael has written extensively about public policy issues associated with saving, retirement and pensions, including a book, How to create a competitive market in pensions – the international lessons.

He had a ‘Who do you think you are?’ moment in 2010 when he first saw a photo of his great-great-great-grandmother, Tiraha Cook. That prompted him to write William and Tiraha’s story. Michael talks to NZ Booklovers.

Tell us a little about William & Tiraha.

This is the story of my great-great-great grandparents, William Cook, an English cooper, and Tiraha, whangai daughter of Tamati Waka Nene, a prominent Ngapuhi leader. William arrived in the Bay of Islands in 1823 and, with Nene’s blessing, took Tiraha as his wife. They became one of New Zealand’s earliest bi-racial couples.

In 1826, William led a team of eight shipbuilders and their Maori wives to Pegasus Harbour in Stewart Island. They were to build a 120-ton whaling ship. The story describes their challenges and how, together, they won their freedom out of privation. Along the way, they built two ships, a whaling station (Cuttle Cove in Preservation Harbour) and assisted the legendary Weller brothers to repair a fire-damaged whaling station at Otakou.

Moving back to the Bay of Islands in 1834, they bought land in the Waikare Inlet from Tiraha’s hapu and lived through New Zealand’s foundational constitutional events of the 1830s and 1840s. Along the way, they had 12 children and 92 grandchildren we know of.

William & Tiraha is a story of resourcefulness, of strength through unity; of two people, from very different backgrounds, surviving a period of great change because of their cultural and racial differences. They became amongst the first new ‘New Zealanders’.

It’s described as a ‘biographical novel’. Can you explain what that is?

From historical records and family lore, we know a fair bit about the two main characters. That is the ‘biographical’ bit.  Those historical facts needed to be knitted together into what I hope is a readable tale.  That’s the ‘novel’ part.

The book’s conceit is that this was written in the 1870s, as recorded by their grandson Abraham Creighton after he visited them and heard them describe their lives and adventures.

What inspired you to write this book?

The book’s genesis was work I have done on my genealogy. Joining Ancestry.com and getting my DNA done allowed me to build a reasonably complete picture of my family’s history. I know who all 32 of my great-great-great grandparents are, and even some further back.

The more I found out about William and Tiraha, the more I thought this was a story that deserved wider circulation. I had just finished Jenny Pattrick’s The Denniston Rose and Landings so I wrote to Jenny in 2011 and suggested she might like to use William and Tiraha for a story. She replied, saying she was fully committed and wondered why I didn’t do it myself – “perhaps you should have a go at it!”

That was the inspiration but life intervened. I didn’t get serious about the writing until 2020.

What research was involved? This must have been a considerable job, researching for this book!

Gathering the family history was the first step. That process still continues as new information comes to light. Ancestry.com makes that much easier than it used to be. The family history sets the story’s framework.

The internet generally is a rich and growing source of information. Do you want to find out how wooden ships were built in the early 1800s? There are videos on line that show how. What about the names of ships that visited Pegasus Harbour in Stewart Island in the 1820s and 1830s? What did Cuttle Cove, in Preservation Harbour look like in the late 1820s; or Port Jackson in the early 1830s? All this kind of information let me build a picture of where William and Tiraha fitted into their environment.

I built a bibliography with 179 entries, ranging from contemporary diaries, through Victorian and more recent publications. In some cases, (for example, John Boultbee’s Journal of a Rambler (1817-1834); David Collin’s Kirkudbright’s Prince of Denmark), they provide evidence of key dates and events in the lives of William and Tiraha Cook. In other cases, they helped me understand what life was like in New Zealand’s 1820s to 1850s; how things were done in those times.

We also visited some of the locations I describe: Paihia, Russell and Orari in the Bay of Islands; Utakura in the Hokianga, and Fortrose in Toetoes Bay and Stewart Island in the deep south. The restoration project on the wooden ship Daring at Mangawhai Museum was also instructive.

I now know a lot more about New Zealand’s early history. Did you know, for example, that Captain William Hobson’s first official act, after arriving at Kororareka (now Russell), was to issue a proclamation that annulled all land transactions between Maori and settlers before his arrival? I didn’t. William and Tiraha had just paid for the purchase of one block and had agreed the purchase of a second. Hobson also said there would be a land commission, set up to investigate all those transactions but, as I have imagined it, that did not comfort William and Tiraha.

What was your routine or process when writing this book?

I had shared my intention to write the book with my fourth cousins. William and Tiraha were also their great-great-great grandparents. I was very conscious that, although I was doing the writing, it was not just my story to tell.

So I set up a subscriber-only website and, as I completed each chapter, I posted it to the website along with a document that listed the questions I had about that bit of the story. I asked for their help to correct mistakes and to add detail that I did not have. I wanted William & Tiraha to be our story.

That process took from August 2022 to October 2023. By the end, I had 72 subscribers to the website. Having to produce a chapter every 3-4 weeks was a useful discipline.

After the first draft of the text was completed and put through the editing process (three editors in all), I kept my cousins up to date with progress.

What did you enjoy the most about writing William & Tiraha?

I had done a lot of technical writing in my working life and am comfortable with non-fiction, but William & Tiraha is a biographical novel – fiction based on fact. I had to train myself in that discipline, not having done any formal courses on creative writing, so I hope I pass muster.

I also enjoyed having an excuse to understand New Zealand’s past. As I told William’s and Tiraha’s story, it struck me there is a lesson in their tale for today’s New Zealanders.  We need to stop being divided by our past. William and Tiraha survived and thrived because together they were stronger, drawing on both their cultures to create something new – ‘New Zealanders’. That understanding firmed up my commitment to the project.

What did you do to celebrate finishing this book?

After the final editor Juliet Dreaver had completed her work, I did a close, detailed read-through. My wife and I were then in the middle of an eight-week campervan trip around the South Island. We were at Franz Josef during a summer storm so we could accommodate the 2-3 days’ work of that last check.

I sent the final, final version of the text back to Juliet. We then drove South to Jackson Bay – as far as you can go down the West Coast, where we freedom-camped. And we celebrated the completion of the text with a crayfish lunch at the Craypot Café.

What is the favourite book you have read so far this year and why?

I am reading Reimagining Social Security: Global Lessons For Retirement Policy Changes (Romina Boccia and Ivane Nachkebia, Cato Institute 2025). It’s significant for me for two reasons. First, it’s great to see a conservative research group like Cato, recommending a New Zealand-style universal age pension to fix the broken US ‘Social Security’. The authors are also asking the questions and discussing the issues in a way that we should be doing here in New Zealand.

Secondly, I have a personal stake in the book. The Cato Institute asked me to participate in an international symposium to explain the way we do things, which I did in May 2024; a stimulating experience!

What’s next on the agenda for you?

We have house renovations ahead, so no more significant writing on the horizon. However, there is an interesting great-great-grandfather, a young transported convict from Dublin, who tidied up his CV and moved on to New Zealand. For another time!

Quentin Wilson Publishing