Chapter 2 - The 18th Royal Irish Regiment

Perhaps influenced by the passing of his mother earlier that year or seeking a better life, Robert, who at the time was working as a labourer, enlisted with the 2nd Battalion of the 18th Royal Irish Regiment of Foot on the 15th August 1859, barely a month after turning 18. The 2nd Battalion had been formed just a few years earlier in response to the British Army’s expansion during the mid-19th century. It was part of the efforts to strengthen the military's reach across the growing empire, with the battalion focusing on training and deployment to address imperial conflicts.

Robert possibly enlisted at Buttevant, Ireland. This raises intriguing questions about his decision to join an Irish battalion and why he was in Ireland at the time. Could he have used his mother’s former Massey family connections to facilitate his enlistment? Or perhaps his ties to Ireland were deeper, stemming from familial or ancestral links yet to be fully understood. 

The Regiment was stationed at camps in Ireland, including Templemore and Curragh Camp, before being sent to Aldershot in England. From October 1859 to January 1863, they underwent training at various places in England and the Channel Islands. In the 1861 UK census, Robert is 'quartered at Shorncliffe', a known training facility for the 18th Regiment at Folkstone, England. His occupation is recorded as a bugler/fifer.

On the other side of the world in Aotearoa, the European settler population was increasing rapidly. Overcrowding, limited plots of land to purchase, poor living conditions, and rural displacement pushed people to escape the hardships of England's rigid class system or to finally acquire their own piece of land.

The British Empire itself encouraged settlement to ease the burgeoning population and to bolster control and economic development in its colonies. It even gave promises of land ownership, Government incentives; like free passage and land grants, and private recruitment schemes further encourage migration. One of their methods was through the circulation of newspaper advertisements telling of ‘great gobs of lands that no one wanted’ in a faraway place called 'New Zealand'.

Many families boarded emigrant ships bound for Aotearoa enchanted with the idea of getting their own slice of the pie. But once they arrived they very quickly realised it was not to be.

Land was often in Māori possession making it very difficult to obtain and Māori were also generally unwilling to cede further land to settlers, especially after past experiences with questionable sales and increasing dissatisfaction with European encroachment.

This led to mounting tensions between settlers and Māori, particularly in Taranaki and the Waikato, where Māori landowners had formed the Kīngitanga (Māori King Movement) as a unifying body to resist land sales and assert Māori sovereignty. The establishment of the Kīngitanga in 1858 under the leadership of the first Māori King, Pōtatau Te Wherowhero aimed to prevent land sales and establish a Māori-controlled governance structure. The British saw this as an insult to the Crown and feared it would encourage a broader Māori resistance against British rule further locking out settlers from what they saw as their entitlement.

The First Taranaki War (1860-1861) was sparked by disputes over land purchases in Waitara, Taranaki, where the government attempted to acquire land from Te Āti Awa iwi against their will. Fighting broke out in 1860, leading to a costly and drawn-out conflict known as the First Taranaki War. Although a temporary truce was reached in 1861, underlying tensions remained unresolved, prompting the British authorities to prepare for further conflict. Governor George Grey arrived in New Zealand in 1861 with a more aggressive policy, as he sought to "pacify" Māori resistance by strengthening British military presence.

Grey saw the Waikato region, the heartland of the Kīngitanga movement, as central to pacifying the Māori resistance. He believed that by invading Waikato and defeating the Kīngitanga forces, he could dismantle the Māori resistance and open vast tracts of land for European settlement. To execute this strategy, he needed a substantial military force capable of launching and sustaining a major offensive into Māori territory, which led him to request additional British regiments.

At Greys request, detachments from the 18th Royal Irish, the 43rd, 50th, and the 68th regiments, in total 3000 soldiers were dispatched to New Zealand. Many of the soldiers had fought as infantry foot soldiers during the Indian uprising of 1857 which Grey believed would be more of a tactical advantage against Māori forces, who were known for their guerilla-style, trench warfare and extensive knowledge of their local terrain.

The black ball liner The Elizabeth Ann Bright departed from Portsmouth Dockyards England on the 1st April 1863 with the bulk of the 2nd battalion 18th Irish regiment, 908 souls in total - onboard being one bugler Robert William Kirkby. They sailed down the coast of Africa, passing the meridan of Cape of Good Hope on the 33th May 1857. The vessel anchored temporarily At Cape Maria van Diemen near the tip of Cape Reinga, as they had to contend with a succession of strong southerlies all the way down the coast in to Auckland. The Elizabeth Ann Bright dropped anchor in Waitemata Harbour on the 1st July. The remainder of the battalion arrived on the TS Norwood after departing 2 weeks later from Plymouth.