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Captain John Korff Discovers Coffs Harbour

In or about 1847 Captain John Korff in his ship "Brothers" took shelter in the lee of the southern headland during a southerly gale.
His destination had been the Bellinger River but it was too dangerous to attempt a crossing of the bar in such weather,
so he sought temporary refuge some 20 miles to the north. He is said to have remained there for four days,
during which time his sons Frederick and Gordon went ashore on the sandy beach.

Korff was sufficiently impressed with the safety offered by the coastal configuration and the good depth of water to furnish a report when,
in due course, he returned to Sydney. What form his report took is unknown, for no official documentation appears to exist.
However, he is rightly recognised as the discoverer of Coffs Harbour, despite the possibility that others used its shelter before him.
Firstly, no other explanation of the unusual name has ever been forthcoming; secondly, two nearby islands (Muttonbird or North Coff Island and Korffs Islet)
bear his name; and thirdly, the harbour itself is believed to have been called Korffs Harbour until the name was printed (presumably by mistake)
as "Coff's" in a Gazettal notice in 1861 (see below).

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Capt John Korff (1799-1870), rightly credited as the "discoverer" of Coffs Harbour.

No white settlement occurred immediately following Capt Korffs 1847 visit to the future harbour.
However, the authorities evidently recognised the area's suitability as a port; for, with the passage of the Robertson Lands Act in 1861,
the government forestalled any claims by prospective selectors to harbour-side land by reserving some 960 acres of it.
This area, referred to as Reserve 15 at Coffs Harbour (note spelling) was proclaimed in the Gow Gazette of 24 Dec 1861 at page 2765 as:

The Crown Lands within the following boundaries: Commencing on the sea coast at a point 1 mile, northerly,
from the Head of Coffs Harbour; and bounded thence on the north by a line bearing west 1mile; on the west by a line bearing south 11/2 mile;
on the south by a line bearing east to the sea; and on the east by the sea, northerly to the point of commencement.

Reservation of harbour side land for a future township showed commendable prudence, for, as settlement of the nearby Bellinger
and the more distant Clarence valleys progressed, cedar-getters and land-hungry settlers were keen to seek out and occupy any new land of promise.
Within ten years Coffs Harbour was to fall within their sights.

Excerpt from George E. England's
The Australian Dictionary of Biography[1]
Volume 5, Melbourne University Press, 1974, pp 40-40.

KORFF, JOHN (1799-1870), shipbuilder, was born on 9 September 1799 in London,
son of John Conrad Korff, a German who migrated from Brunswick and became a haberdasher in Hackney.
After sound schooling, he was apprenticed at the Royal Naval Dockyard in Deptford and qualified in shipbuilding and naval architecture.

He opened a yard at Lowestoft where he built and repaired ships and prospered until some of his debtors failed
and his business went into receivers' hands in 1833. After his affairs were settled he left his wife,
three sons and a daughter with his mother and sailed for Sydney.

He arrived in December 1835 with a letter of introduction to a leading merchant, Edye Manning.
With Manning, Korff bought the wreck of a small steamer Ceres and with the aid of pontoons and a bullock team
worked her ashore where he salvaged the timbers and from them built a 49-ton cutter Rover's Bride;
the engines he proposed to install in a 270-ton paddle steamer he was building at the slipway on his farm at Miller's Forest on the Hunter and for her strength and sailing qualities.

Manning had financed the work and formed a company with Korff as superintendent.
The Victoria carried passengers and cargo between Newcastle and Sydney for several years;
she was sold for £16,000 when rivals, with iron ships and more powerful engines, took over the trade.
When Manning's company went bankrupt Korff returned to shipbuilding as shipping was in great demand for linking the scattered settlements.
His wife Mary, née Gordon, whom he had married in London in 1820, arrived in 1840 with a thousand sovereigns strapped around her waist,
Korff was then able to escape bankruptcy.

With his sons he built the 45-ton schooner Sisters in 1842 and in 1845 the 27-ton ketch Brothers.
These two ships traded between Newcastle and Sydney carrying coal and general cargoes for many years.

He also built the Currency Lass which ran for fifty-five years and the first clinker-built ketch Kangaroo,
and designed the Freak built by the Chownes brothers on the Clarence.
He became a marine surveyor to the underwriters of the Lloyds Insurance group and his surveys were often accepted in lawsuits.

In 1864 he tried to rescue a ship caught on the Clarence River bar.
With his son Frederick he established a ferry service to Balmain and another from Woolloomooloo Bay to Manly
where he had acquired a water frontage for wharves. He did not complete his ambitious scheme to establish a shipping line to Auckland,
but acquired a large water frontage there.

Survived by his wife and two sons, he died at his home in Hereford Street, Glebe, on 14 December 1870.
Next day the Sydney papers reported that flags on various ships flew at half-mast in respect for his work.

In 1847 John Korff had sought refuge in a gale in a port which he called Korff's Harbour.
In 1861 surveyors changed the name to Coff's but according to newspaper and family reports Korff's name continued to be used for many years.

Select Bibliography
Australian, 2 Jan, 2 Mar, 4 Nov 1841;
Sydney Morning Herald, 12 Nov 1844; letter from John Korff to his wife, 24 Apr 1840, document 362 (State Library of New South Wales).
Author: George E. England
Print Publication Details:
George E. England, 'Korff, John (1799 - 1870)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 5, Melbourne University Press, 1974, pp 40-40.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THIS PORT
The following statement was probably prepared by a local community group for submission to the committee which prepared the 1946 Parliamentary report.

Korff realised the potentialities of the fine stretch of water, which he named Korff's Creek,
and also the very splended natural bay which Mother Nature had so generously placed in close proximity to the outlet to the creek.
He used both the creek and the harbour as a refuge for his ships during any rough weather.
The Creek was at that time a very wide and deeply flowing stream and boats could traverse its length for a great distance.
It has been stated on some occasions that a little later Korff built a rough shack on the water frontage
and began to draw upon the huge supplies of timber, including the famous red cedars which were growing in abundance nearby
and which he exported to Sydney and other centres. This, of course, has never been proved beyond any doubt.
John Korff regarded the harbour as his own and maintained its upkeep for twenty years until his death in 1870,
and later Walter Narvie took up residence and began life as a cedar-getter in 1870.

MANNING, EDYE (1807-1889), merchant and shipowner, was born at Exeter, Devon, England, a son of John Edye Manning.
He came to New South Wales with his wife, Fanny Elizabeth, and his eldest son, John Edye, in December 1831.
He was a member of the provisional committee of the Australian Fire and Life Assurance Co. (1835),
a director of the Australian Gaslight Co. (1836), and entered the embryonic steamship trade with the paddle-steamer Maitland, 103 tons, in 1838.

Employing a method of salvaging wrecks that he originated with John Korff, he raised the Ceres(Hunter River Steam Packet Association)
and built the fast Victoria around her engines in 1841. He tried without success to establish an 'Australasian Steam Navigation Co.'
and to provide a steamer for the Sydney-Melbourne run after the 297-ton Clonmel sank near Wilson's Promontory,
but in 1841 he entered the Sydney-Parramatta service with three small paddle-steamers, the Emu, the Kangaroo and the Experiment,
in which he installed an engine to replace the horses previously used.