Henry Williams (11 February 1792 – 16 July 1867) was the leader of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) mission in New Zealand in the first half of the 19th century.
Williams entered the Royal Navy at the age of fourteen and served in the Napoleonic Wars. He went to New Zealand in 1823 as a missionary. The Bay of Islands Māori gave Williams the nickname Karu-whā ("Four-eyes" as he wore spectacles). He was known more widely as Te Wiremu. ('Wiremu' being the Māori form of 'William'). His younger brother, William Williams, was also a missionary in New Zealand and known as "the scholar-surgeon". Their grandfather, the Reverend Thomas Williams (1725–1770), was a Congregational minister at the Independent Chapel of Gosport.
Although Williams was not the first missionary in New Zealand – Thomas Kendall, John Gare Butler, John King and William Hall having come before him – he was "the first to make the mission a success, partly because the others had opened up the way, but largely because he was the only man brave enough, stubborn enough, and strong enough to keep going, no matter what the dangers, and no matter what enemies he made".
In 1840, Williams translated the Treaty of Waitangi into the Māori language, with some help from his son Edward.
On 21 September 1844, Williams was installed as Archdeacon of Te Waimate in the diocese centred on Te Waimate mission.
Parents, brothers and sisters
Williams was the son of Thomas Williams (Gosport, England, 27 May 1753 – Nottingham 6 January 1804) and Mary Marsh (10 April 1756 – 7 November 1831) who had married in Gosport on 17 April 1783. Thomas Williams was a supplier of uniforms to the Royal Navy in Gosport. In 1794, Thomas and Mary Williams and their six children moved to Nottingham, then the thriving centre of the East Midlands industrial revolution. Thomas Williams was listed in the Nottingham trade directories as a hosier. The industry was based on William Lee's stocking frame knitting machine. The business was successful. Thomas Williams received recognition as a Burgess of Nottingham in 1796 and as a Sheriff of Nottingham in 1803. However the prosperity which had been such a feature of the hosiery industry in the second half of the 18th century ended. In 1804, when Thomas Williams died of typhus at the age of 50, his wife was left with a heavily mortgaged business with five sons and three daughters to look after.
Williams's parents had nine children, of whom six (including himself) were born in Gosport and three (including William Williams) in Nottingham: Mary (Gosport, England, 2 March 1784 – Gosport, England, 19 April 1786) Thomas Sydney (Gosport, England, 11 February 1786 – Altona, Germany, 12 February 1869) Lydia (Gosport, England, 17 January 1788 – 13 December 1859), married (7 July 1813) Edward Garrard Marsh (8 February 1783 – 20 September 1862) John (Gosport, England, 22 March 1789 – New Zealand, 9 March 1855) Henry (Gosport, England, 11 February 1792 – Pakaraka, Bay of Islands, New Zealand 16 July 1867) Joseph William (Gosport, England, 27 October 1793 – Gosport, England, August 1799) Mary Rebecca (Nottingham, England, 3 June 1795 – Bethlehem, Palestine 17 December 1858) Catherine (Nottingham, England, 28 July 1797 – Southwell, Nottinghamshire, England, 11 July 1881) William (Nottingham, England, 18 July 1800 – Napier, New Zealand, 9 February 1878)
Williams was aged 11 when his father died (his brother William Williams was three).
1806–1815: Navy years
In 1806, aged 14, Williams entered the Royal Navy, serving on . He became a midshipman in 1807. He then served on HMS Maida under Captain Samuel Hood Linzee during the Battle of Copenhagen when the Danish fleet was seized in 1807. He landed with the party of seamen who manned the breaching battery before the city. He participated in the engagement on 13 February 1810, when 8 boats under the command of Lieutenant Gardiner Henry Guion, attacked nine French gun boats in the Basque Roads. On , under Captain Woodley Losack, he took part in the Battle of Tamatave (1811) between three English frigates, under the command of Captain Schomberg, and three French vessels of superior force. Williams was wounded and never entirely recovered. For this service he qualified for the Naval General Service Medal, which was awarded in 1847 with clasp "Off Tamatave 20 May 1811".