We think of the sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands as a conservation success, full of seals, peat bogs and birds, the culling then saving of a seaweed-eating breed of cows, and all constantly battered by rain and southern winds. While there is evidence for very early Māori occupation, the group of small islands first came into wider notice as a base for whaling and sealing in the early 19th C, then for a rather mad settlement and immigration scheme. Over the whole of the century, the islands stood inconveniently in the way of ships sailing from Australia to London, and these along with more scientific explorations, and voyages serving the whaling and sealing industry, resulted in shipwrecks which were the stuff of adventure stories. Much of this has been written up, from the 1830s onwards, and features in the article attached here.