# 34022
New South Wales. Legislative Assembly.
[NEW GUINEA; CATHOLIC MISSIONS] Massacre at Woodlark Island, (of crew and passengers of brig “Gazelle.”)
$165.00 AUD
Ordered by the Legislative Assembly to be printed, 27 February, 1857. Sydney : Government printer, 1857. Foolscap folio, string bound, pp [1], 15; marginal water damage at top edges, else fine.
‘Return to an Address from the Honorable the Legislative Assembly, dated 10 February, 1857, requesting that His Excellency the Governor General would be pleased to cause to be laid upon the Table – “Copies of all Correspondence between the Government and all other persons with reference to the massacre of the crew and passengers of the brig “Gazelle,” at Woodlark Island.”
In late August 1855 the Gazelle, under Captain W. T. Parkin, had sailed from Sydney bound for Woodlark Island in the Trobriands, having on board a quantity of stores for the Roman Catholic mission station there, and a new missionary for the island, the Italian clergyman Fr. Giovanni Battista Mazzucconi, who was martyred in the massacre. In response to petitioning by the relatives of the victims, the New South Wales government authorised a punitive expedition to Woodlark some two years after the event.