New Zealand Company ships
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. 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.
Jerningham Wakefield
Jerningham Wakefield had intended to stay in New Zealand for only a few months but he found the growth of the new colony so fascinating that it was four years before he returned to England in 1844. He quickly assembled his journals and they were published as "Adventures in New Zealand" in April 1845. The favourable picture he presented of the colony founded by the New Zealand Company helped the Company to avoid censure in the House of Commons.