Episode 1 of 4

Arrival of Advance Party

When: 20 September 1839
Where: Wellington, New Zealand
Part of: British colonists found the settlement of Wellington

An advance party of the New Zealand Company arrived on the ship Tory in September 1839, initiating European settlement in the area.

Colonel William Wakefield arrived in 1839 to purchase land for the New Zealand Company to sell to prospective British settlers. The first group of settlers arrived on the ship Tory on 20 September 1839, marking the beginning of European settlement in the Wellington area.

Sources

Wellington Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-24

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.