New Zealand Company
The New Zealand Company, chartered in the United Kingdom, was a company that existed in the first half of the 1800s on a business model focused on the systematic colonisation of New Zealand. The company was formed to carry out the principles 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.
New Zealand Tunnelling Company
After New Zealand had become the first Dominion to agree the formation of a Royal Engineer tunnelling company on 17 September 1915, the government encouraged early enlistment to form the New Zealand Mining Corps. On 11 October, specialist tunnellers' training began on the Avondale racecourse near Auckland. The tunnelling company numbered 16 engineering officers and 407 other ranks, plus one officer and two men from the Medical Corps, 19 men from the New Zealand Army Service Corps, and one man from the New Zealand Army Pay Corps, a total of 446 soldiers. On 18 December 1915, the men of the New Zealand Tunnelling Company left Auckland on board the SS Ruapehu. After stop-overs in Montevideo and Dakar, the ship arrived at Plymouth on 3 February 1916. After further training in England, the unit was deployed to northern France.