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Able Tasman becomes first European to find the North Island
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Period: to
Captain Cook mapped the whole of Aotearoa in series of 3 voyages
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First whaling ship in NZ
Whaling commenced in New Zealand waters only 22 years after Captain Cook's first voyage to New Zealand. The first recorded whale ship was the William and Ann under the command of Captain William Bunker, who called at Doubtless Bay in 1791 during a sperm-whaling voyage in the Pacific Ocean. -
Sailors landed on Banks Peninsula
Sailors from the sealing ship Governor Bligh landed that Europeans first set foot on Banks Peninsula. In 1827 Captain William Wiseman, a flax trader, named the harbour (now known as Lyttelton Harbour) Port Cooper, after one of the owners of the Sydney trading firm, Cooper & Levy. -
Period: to
The local Māori population
The reasons included fighting between different groups of Ngāi Tahu, raids by the Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha from 1830 to 1832, and the impact of European diseases, especially measles and influenza, from which hundreds of Māori died. -
New Zealand Company founded with aim to create English colonies in NZ
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. -
Treaty of Waitangi Signed
The Treaty of Waitangi is a treaty first signed on 6 February 1840 by representatives of the British Crown and various Māori chiefs from the North Island of New Zealand. It resulted in the declaration of British sovereignty over New Zealand by Lieutenant Governor William Hobson in May 1840. -
Period: to
Captain Joseph Thomas chose a site for the Canterbury settlement
In December Captain Joseph Thomas, a surveyor, was sent to Canterbury to choose a site for the Canterbury settlement, and prepare for the first settlers. By the time that John Robert Godley, leader of the Canterbury settlement arrived with his family on the Lady Nugent on 12 April 1850, Captain Thomas had built a jetty, customs house and barracks accommodation for the newly arrived settlers. He had planned three towns - Christchurch, Sumner and Lyttelton. -
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First Ships Arrive
The first of the ships, the Charlotte Jane, arrived in Lyttelton on the morning of December 16, 1850, and was met by Godley and Sir George and Lady Grey. The first ashore of the travellers, known as the Pilgrims, was James Edward Fitzgerald, who leapfrogged over Dr Alfred Barker, sitting in the prow of the rowing boat. The second of the ships, the Randolph, arrived on the afternoon of 16 December, followed by the Sir George Seymour on 17 December, and the Cressy, on 27 December. -
First school opened
School in Lyttelton opened by the Reverend Henry Jacobs.
