{"story":["The New Zealand Company grew out of Edward Gibbon Wakefield's theory of colonisation. He argued for selling colonial land at a 'sufficient price', high enough that only the well-off could buy, so landowners would never lack hired hands, with the money paying for emigration. In March 1839 the company's backers learned that a government bill would let Māori land be bought from the Crown alone. Wakefield urged them to move first: \"Possess yourselves of the soil and you are secure.\" The company had already agreed to buy the barque Tory, a 381-ton ship carrying eight guns, from the shipowner Joseph Somes for £5250. She left Plymouth on 12 May 1839 under Captain Edward Chaffers with 35 people aboard. Before she sailed, the government warned that it could not guarantee the company's titles to Māori land.","The expedition was led by Colonel William Wakefield, Edward's brother, who had commanded lancers in the British Legion in Spain. With him were his nephew Edward Jerningham Wakefield, the naturalist Ernst Dieffenbach, the draughtsman Charles Heaphy and a young Māori interpreter, Nahiti. The voyage took 96 days, a time no later company ship beat. Wakefield had £3000 of goods to barter for land and instructions to look for good harbours, navigable rivers and water power, and to promise Māori that a tenth of any land sold would be kept for them. He also had a deadline. Before the company knew the Tory had arrived, it had sold every section in its first settlement, and emigrant ships were due at a rendezvous at d'Urville Island on 10 January 1840.","The Tory reached Queen Charlotte Sound in mid-August 1839, and after some weeks in the sounds crossed to Port Nicholson, where the trader Dicky Barrett piloted her in to anchor off Petone. The Te Āti Awa chiefs Te Puni and Te Wharepōuri had settled at Pito-one a few years earlier at the invitation of kin from Ngāti Mutunga. Within a week Wakefield had their signatures on a deed he took to cover the harbour and its ranges, paid for in goods that included iron pots, guns and ammunition, axes, fish hooks, umbrellas and red nightcaps. Those who agreed later gave two reasons: settlers and their weapons would protect them against Ngāti Raukawa, and 'their Pākehā' would bring trade and work. Wakefield went on to Kāpiti, Queen Charlotte Sound and Whanganui. By November he held deeds that, on paper, gave the company about 20 million acres, roughly a third of the country. Te Rauparaha told him that Ngāti Toa had meant to part with only two small areas.","The first emigrant ship, the Aurora, reached Port Nicholson in January 1840. Hobson then ruled that earlier purchases from Māori had to be examined by government commissioners. The commissioner, William Spain, found that the chiefs of Te Aro, Pipitea and Kumutoto, the pā on the planned town site, had been neither consulted nor paid. He also found that Te Wharepōuri had sold land that was not his to sell, and that Barrett had explained the terms very poorly. The company had to pay a further £1500 and was awarded 71,900 acres at Wellington. It had already given up its 20-million-acre claim in a deal with the Colonial Office in 1840. Edward Gibbon Wakefield later claimed the Tory had pushed a reluctant government into annexing New Zealand and saved it from the French. Historians now reject that story."],"sources":[{"title":"History of immigration","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/history-of-immigration","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"New Zealand Company ship Tory arrives","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/new-zealand-company-ship-tory-arrives","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Wakefield, Edward Gibbon","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1w4/wakefield-edward-gibbon","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Wakefield, Edward Jerningham","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1w5/wakefield-edward-jerningham","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"WAKEFIELD, Lieutenant-Colonel William Hayward (1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand)","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/wakefield-lieutenant-colonel-william-hayward","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Ships, Famous – Tory (1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand)","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/ships-famous/page-4","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Wellington region – European arrival","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/wellington-region/page-6","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Te Āti Awa of Wellington – 1830s: settling the land","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/te-ati-awa-of-wellington/page-4","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"New Zealand Company","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_Company","publisher":"Wikipedia"}]}