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 Company ships
The "Tory" was a 382-ton barque built at Yarmouth in 1834 and acquired by the New Zealand Company for ₤5250 from Joseph Somes, a wealthy shipowner and member of the committee. The New Zealand Company fitted out for sailing to Wellington under Captain Edward Chaffers and conducting land acquisitions and surveys. Colonel William Wakefield was the expedition's commander. By 12 May 1839, when the Tory left England, the company had already begun advertising and selling land in New Zealand, and by the end of July—months before the company had even learned the Tory had arrived in New Zealand—all available sections for its first settlement had been sold. The Tory was the first of three New Zealand Company surveyor ships sent off in haste to prepare for settlers in New Zealand. She arrived in Queen Charlotte Sound on 17 September 1839 and Port Nicholson on 20 September.