1840 New Zealand Company surveyors arrive in Port Nicholson

Surveyors arrived in Port Nicholson to lay out plans for the proposed New Zealand Company settlement of Britannia at Pito-one (Petone). When this site proved unsuitable, the town was relocated across the harbour. It would be called Wellington in honour of the victor in the Battle of Waterloo.

The survey party, led by Captain William Mein Smith, arrived on the Cuba, a name that would become a familiar part of the region’s landscape, with Cuba Streets in both Petone and central Wellington. A map for the new settlement had been prepared in England by Samuel Cobham. It was designed primarily to convince investors to support the venture. This incredibly orderly design with its grid pattern contained familiar names to remind settlers of England – though Covent Garden, Soames Square and Billingsgate Fish Market did not make it to the final settlement.

The New Zealand Company and its model of systematic colonisation was the brainchild of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Central to his plans for was a package of land consisting of a town acre (0.4 ha) and an accompanying 100 country acres (40 ha). There were 1100 one-acre town sections in the plan for Port Nicholson, but Mein Smith struggled to reproduce this on the ground because of the geography of the area.

Time was also against Mein Smith. The Company was desperate to move before the British government intervened in New Zealand. As a result an impossible timeframe was set for the Company surveyors. When the first settler ship arrived on 22 January, there was no sign on the ground of the carefully laid out plan.

Image: The Cuba at anchor in Port Nicholson