Five people of the Boyd had been spared in the massacre: Ann Morley and her baby, in a cabin; Apprentice Thomas Davis (or Davison), hidden in the hold; the second mate; and two-year-old Betsy Broughton, taken by a local chief who puts a feather in her hair and keeps her for three weeks before rescue.

The mate had been killed and eaten when his usefulness in making fishhooks was exhausted.

When news of the massacre reaches European settlements, Captain Alexander Berry undertakes a rescue mission aboard The City of Edinburgh.

Berry rescues the four survivors, and his crew finds piles of human bones on the shoreline, with many evincing cannibalism.

Captain Berry captures two Māori chiefs responsible for the massacre, at first holding them for ransom for the return of survivors.

Berry subsequently threatens the chiefs after the survivors are returned that they will be taken to Europe in order to answer for their crimes unless they release the Boyd's papers.

After the papers are given to him, he releases the chiefs, making it a condition of their release that they will be "degraded from their rank, and received among the number of his slaves", although he never expects this condition to be complied with. (Berry, Alexander (April 1819). "Particulars of a late visit to New Zealand, and of the measures taken for rescuing some of English captives there". The Edinburgh Magazine: 304.)

They express gratitude for the mercy.

Berry's gesture avoids further bloodshed—an inevitability had the chiefs been executed.

The rescued four people are taken on board Berry's ship bound for the Cape of Good Hope.

However, the ship encounters storms and is damaged, and after repairs will arrive in Lima, Peru, where Mrs. Morely will die.

The boy, called Davis or Davidson, will go from Lima to England aboard the Archduke Charles, and later work for Berry in New South Wales and drown while exploring the entrance to the Shoalhaven River with Berry in 1822.

The child of Mrs. Morely and Betsy Broughton will be taken onward by Berry to Rio de Janeiro, from where they will return to Sydney in May 1812 aboard the Atalanta.

Betsy Broughton will marry Charles Throsby, nephew of the explorer Charles Throsby, and die in 1891.