William Tucker (c. 16 May 1784 – December 1817) was a British convict, a sealer, a trader in human heads, an Otago settler, and New Zealand’s first art dealer.
A document discovered in 2003 revealed his activities had no bearing on the war in the south and shows he was the first New Zealand art dealer, initially trading in human heads and secondarily in pounamu a variety of Nephrite jade.
In 1798 Tucker and Thomas Butler shoplifted goods worth more than five shillings from a 'Taylor' William Wilday or Wildey, and were convicted and sentenced to death.
The Māori had developed tattooing and moko to a greater extent than any other society and high born males wore full facial adornment unique to the individual.
[10] Tucker was sent to look for the missing men first on the Isle of Wight and then to ‘Ragged Point’, apparently the headland on Stewart Island at the western entrance to Foveaux Strait.
When they failed to find the missing men, Tucker rejoined Brothers at Otago Harbour and returned with her to Sydney on 14 July 1810.
Later that year, at Otago Harbour, a Māori chief's theft of a red shirt and knife from a man who disembarked from Sydney Cove started a rolling feud which soon took the lives of some of Brothers’ missing men and soured Māori/Pākehā relations in the south.
Tucker left Sydney again on Aurora, on 19 September 1810 for the newly discovered Macquarie Island far to the south of New Zealand.
It was presumably shortly after this that Tucker offered the Māori head for sale, inaugurating their retail trade and earning him the condemnation of ‘Candor’ in the Sydney Gazette, which called him ‘a wild fellow’ and a 'villain'.
On 21 August he and Edward Williams stole a woman's fancy silk cloak, for which they were convicted in November, sentenced to a year's hard labour, and sent to Newcastle.
[17] The site has long been known for its large quantities of worked greenstone, called pounamu in Māori, a variety of Nephrite jade.
[21] He left, went to Hobart and returned on Sophia with Captain James Kelly, bringing other European settlers, according to Māori sources.
A Māori source gave the immediate cause as dissatisfaction at not having the first opportunity to receive Tucker's gifts, but it was also said it was an unhappy consequence of the theft of the shirt in 1810 and its owner's savage reaction.
[24] Returning to his ship in the harbour, Kelly took revenge, by his account killing some Māori, destroying canoes, and firing ‘the beautiful City of Otago’, a harbourside settlement, probably on Te Rauone beach near modern Otakou.