New Zealand Company - Nelson

Nelson

In April 1841 the company informed the Colonial Secretary of its intention to establish a second colony "considerably larger" than the first. The colony was initially to be called Molesworth after Radical MP Sir William Molesworth, a supporter of Wakefield, but was renamed Nelson (after the British admiral) when Molesworth showed little interest in leading the colony. It was planned to cover 201,000 acres (810 km2), consisting of 1000 allotments. Each would be 150 acres (60 hectares) of rural land, 50 acres (20 hectares) of accommodation land and one "town acre" (4000 square metres), with half the funds raised by land sales being spent on emigration and about ₤50,000 ending up as company profits. The land would be sold at ₤301 per allotment or 30 shillings an acre, one pound an acre more than land at Wellington, with a lottery to determine the ownership of specific allotments.

Two ships, the Whitby and Will Watch, sailed that month for New Zealand with surveyors and labourers to prepare plots for the first settlers (scheduled to follow five months later). Land sales proved disappointing, however, and threatened the viability of the settlement: by early June only 326 allotments had been sold, with only 42 purchasers intending to actually travel to New Zealand. Things had improved little by the drawing of the lottery in late August 1841, when only 371 of the allotments were drawn by purchasers, three-quarters of whom were absentee owners.

The two survey ships arrived at Blind Bay (today known as Tasman Bay), where the expedition leaders searched for land suitable for the new colony, before settling on the site of present-day Nelson, an area described as marshy land covered with scrub and fern. In a meeting with local Māori, expedition leader Arthur Wakefield claimed to have gained recognition – in exchange for "presents" of axes, a gun, gunpowder, blankets, biscuits and pipes – for the 1839 "purchases" in the area by William Wakefield. By January 1842 the advance guard had built more than 100 huts on the site of the future town in preparation for the arrival of the first settlers. A month later the township was described as having a population of 500, along with bullocks, sheep, pigs and poultry, although the company was yet to identify or purchase any of the rural land for which purchasers had paid.

The search for this remaining 200,000 acres (810 km2) would ultimately lead to the Wairau Affray – then known as the "Wairau Massacre" – of 17 June 1843, when 22 Europeans and four Maori died in a skirmish over land in the Wairau Valley, 25 km from Nelson. Arthur Wakefield claimed to have bought the land from the widow of a whaler who, in turn, had claimed to have bought it from chief Te Rauparaha. The chief denied having sold it. Although settlers in Nelson and Wellington were appalled at the slaughter at Wairau, an investigation by Governor Robert FitzRoy laid the blame squarely at the feet of the New Zealand Company representatives.

As early as 1839 the New Zealand Company had resolved to "take steps to procure German emigrants" and appointed an agent in Bremen. A bid in September 1841 to sell the Chatham Islands to the Deutsche Colonisations Gesellschaft was quashed by the British Government. German migrants instead moved to Nelson.