Emigrants included the Best

Types of all Classes

WHO were the emigrants? All the evidence goes to show that they were of a class a little above that of the common labourer. Many are down in the ship’s papers as labourers, it is true, but the condition the Company imposed, that no one could be shipped who had ever been in receipt of any form of relief, would rule out men who had been employed only when landowners needed seasonal work, and who at other times lived on the parish. Coopers, joiners, ropemakers, cobblers, as well as blacksmiths, small tradesmen (who mostly paid their own passages, however) came in numbers equalling the total of labourers shipped. With all the Company’s precautions there was still a shortage of labouring men in most parts of early New Zealand. A great deal of the work white men had been intended to do was in fact carried out by gangs of Maoris. There was no lack of professional and business men in the cabin. The ship’s surgeon was generally a settler.

The first shiploads of emigrants who landed at Port Nicholson and Nelson came in most cases from districts near to London. New Plymouth, founded by the Plymouth Company, a local off­shoot of the main New Zealand Company, was first settled by people from Devon. Canterbury, of course, was settled by members of the Church of England, with a fair leavening of North Country emigrants. Otago was settled predominantly by members of the Scottish Free Kirk. All these early settlements, including the smaller ones at Wanganui and in the Manawatu, had a very real sense of community spirit, forming ties on board the ship which were hardly broken till the gold rush brought in many more people with different ideals.