James Cook was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand.
Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy was an English officer of the Royal Navy and a scientist. He achieved lasting fame as the captain of HMS Beagle during Charles Darwin's famous voyage, FitzRoy's second expedition to Tierra del Fuego and the Southern Cone.
A time ball or timeball is a time-signalling device. It consists of a large, painted wooden or metal ball that is dropped at a predetermined time, principally to enable navigators aboard ships offshore to verify the setting of their marine chronometers. Accurate timekeeping is essential to the determination of longitude at sea.
Charlotte Jane was one of the First Four Ships in 1850 to carry emigrants from England to the new colony of Canterbury in New Zealand.
Duke of Roxburgh was launched in 1828 at Newcastle upon Tyne. Initially she traded with India, but later she often sailed between Great Britain and her Australasian colonies carrying emigrants. She was wrecked in 1864.
The City of Dublin Steam Packet Company was a shipping line established in 1823. It served cross-channel routes between Britain and Ireland for over a century. For 70 of those years it transported the mail. It was 'wound-up' by a select committee of the House of Lords in 1922 and finally liquidated in 1930.
Hereford was a 1456-ton iron sailing ship with two decks and one cemented bulkhead which was built in 1869 by J. Elder & Company at Glasgow for the Merchant Shipping Company of London. She was chartered by the New Zealand Shipping Company in the 1870s and made three voyages to Lyttelton, New Zealand with approximately three hundred emigrants each time. The first voyage in 1874 took 87 days, and the second took 80 days, arriving in Lyttelton on 19 January 1878. In 1881, she was stranded on Ingleby Reef near Port Phillip Heads, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and towed off on 12 March 1881 by a tug.
Vice Admiral Sir Henry Mangles Denham was a Royal Navy officer who went on to be Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Station.
The Dunedinlisten (help·info) (1876–90) was the first ship to successfully transport a full cargo of refrigerated meat from New Zealand to England. In this capacity, it provided the impetus to develop the capacity of New Zealand as a major provider of agricultural exports, notwithstanding its remoteness from most markets. Dunedin disappeared at sea in 1890, and neither the ship nor her crew has ever been seen or heard from since.
Marlborough was an iron-built two-decked merchant sailing ship which disappeared in 1890. She was built by the firm of Robert Duncan and Co., Port Glasgow and launched in 1876 for her owner John Leslie, who later sold her to the Albion Line. Marlborough disappeared during a voyage in January 1890, and has not been seen or heard from in over a century. Searches and investigations have yielded nothing conclusive, and the ship's ultimate fate, and that of her crew, remains unknown.
James Townsend was an English wine merchant, who in later life was a pioneer settler in New Zealand's South Island. He was also an amateur cricketer.
Henry Sawtell was Mayor of Christchurch 1871–1872.
John Karslake Karslake was a 19th-century Member of Parliament in the Canterbury region of New Zealand.
The Clontarf, an immigration clipper ship, sailed from England to New Zealand between 1858 and 1860 on commission for the Canterbury Provincial Council, the governing body of Canterbury Province. Sailing under the flag of Willis, Gann and Co, it set out on its first voyage from Plymouth on 20 September 1858, and after a journey of 105 days arrived at Lyttelton, New Zealand on 5 January 1859 with 412 immigrants. Six infants and one adult died on the journey, plus there was a still-birth.
Archduke Charles was built in Newcastle, England in 1809. She was sheathed in copper in 1810 and partially resheathed with copper in 1812. She made one voyage transporting convicts from Ireland to New South Wales, and on her return voyage to Britain she carried a cargo from China for the British East India Company (EIC). She was wrecked in 1816 while carrying troops from Quebec to Nova Scotia.
Matoaka was a 1092-ton wooden New Brunswick full-rigged ship built in 1853 for Willis, Gunn, & Co. She was sold to Shaw, Savill, & Albion by 1859. Between 1859 and 1869 she made eight voyages to New Zealand. Her fastest run from Bristol to Lyttelton, New Zealand was 82 days in 1862. On 13 May 1869 she left Lyttelton for London under Captain Alfred Stevens with 45 passengers and 32 crew but was never seen again. In 1865 she was classed as 1322 tons.
The New Zealand Company was a 19th-century English company that played a key role in the colonisation of New Zealand. The company was formed to carry out the principles of systematic colonisation devised by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the creation of a new-model English society in the southern hemisphere. Under Wakefield's model, the colony would attract capitalists who would then have a ready supply of labour—migrant labourers who could not initially afford to be property owners, but who would have the expectation of one day buying land with their savings.
Quebec, Liverpool, London, Newcastle, St John's, Belfast [1] [2]