Stories from the community
Then there was pitching and tossing, metal pipes and tin cans going topsy turvey, till one might have thought that some monstrous whale was crushing the ribs of the iron ship between its jaws. – Diary of immigrant William McCaw, 1880
In the 19th century, migrants to New Zealand endured dreadful conditions for several months on sailing ships, daily facing the possibility of death by malnutrition and disease, fire, storm, shipwreck and even mutiny.
We asked people around the country to send us stories in their own words of the journey their ancestors made, to begin a new life in New Zealand. Here is a selection.
What's your story?
Determination rewarded
Samuel Joll (1805-1879) and his wife Elizabeth (née Treliving, d. 1882) made the three-month voyage to New Zealand, with five children, between November 1841 and February 1842. They eventually settled in New Plymouth and had five more children.
Hope and sorrow
George and Mary Cooper, pictured here in their eighties when they were well settled in New Zealand, emigrated with six children in 1850–1851.
The diary of George Denton
George Denton emigrated from Yorkshire on the China in 1855. Inventive, entrepreneurial and with a great sense of fun, he whiled away the 19 weeks of shipboard life by taking classes in French, organising musical concerts, rigging up a filter to sell fresh water, learning to sew and cook and cutting passengers' hair for a 'moderate' fee.
A pioneering family
Charlotte Wykes (née Dallow) is pictured in the centre front row, holding papers, with her family. She was just four years old when her family emigrated from England. Her parents managed to keep her alive with food they brought on board. Years later her daughter Gertrude (front row, far left) wrote this account.
From Nottingham on the Flying Foam
Les Jeffs is the great-grandson of Charles Jeffs, who emigrated in 1864. This photograph was taken outside No. 23 Bread Street in England, the site where his relative Edward Jeffs once lived.
Via Newfoundland
An artist’s impression of the Clara, a 132-ton vessel built in Prince Edward Island, Canada for fishing and sealing. It was purchased in 1864 by two enterprising pioneer families, the Footes and the Peaces, to carry them from Newfoundland to New Zealand. She was an exceptionally fast ship, able to make 11 knots before the wind. Her design was modern, with low, sleek lines, but she was inclined to ship water over the side in rough weather. When the Footes and Peaces reached New Zealand she was put up for auction in Auckland, and sent to Australia. She was wrecked on a reef near Newcastle, New South Wales, on 25 July 1874.
Adventures on the Dauntless
Members of the Crawford family pose outside their property, ‘Glen Fern’ in Mauku, in 1868 – three years after an eventful sailing to New Zealand on the emigrant ship Dauntless.
A Scandinavian story
Many Scandinavians, like this family pictured, were lucky to survive the tremendous hardships on board the barque Punjab in 1873. Conditions were so bad that the Immigration Office prosecuted its captain and owners. One in nine passengers died of typhoid before they could set foot on New Zealand shores.
The Lost Boy, and other tales
Thomas Heath was born in Kent, England. With his wife Eliza Mary Stevens and 11 children he made the three-month voyage to New Zealand. A 12th child was born while they were quarantined on Somes Island in Wellington Harbour. As well as a colourful writer, Heath was a skilled plasterer. His work adorned many Auckland buildings, such as the lion's head atop the now demolished Lion Brewery building in Khyber Pass, and the ornate pillars of the Baptist Tabernacle.
Smallpox outbreak
George Grant came to New Zealand from Scotland as a single man in 1877 with hopes of becoming a Presbyterian minister. However he had to remain a lay preacher, becoming a teacher, not a minister, after an argument over the plush seats in St Andrews in Wellington. George is pictured here with his wife Jane (née Duthie), and their children Christina, Frances, Kathleen, Dorothy, John, Nora and Florence, not long before his death from peritonitis in 1900. Jane was left to raise the children alone.
The McCaw chronicles
Pictured are Jean Kydd (née McCaw) and her husband George outside their farmhouse in Wangaloa, South Otago, around 1892. Jean, her parents and eight brothers and sisters came to New Zealand from Scotland on the Stirlingshire in 1880. Jean lived the rest of her years in New Zealand, marrying George Kydd, her elder by 21 years, in 1892. Jean's father, William McCaw, wrote detailed accounts of the family's voyage out to New Zealand. Jean also kept a diary of their life at sea. Extracts from their writings are presented here.