The First Six Ships – Volume 2

European settlers in New Zealand made long voyages, three to six months, to these far islands of the antipodes.

A ship’s story is important to those of us whose ancestors ventured in her to the new country. Ships matter: we are proud to be descended from a forebear who “came out” on one of the first ships. These vessels are our ancestors too. Their sails appear over our conscious horizons and demand our recognition and respect.
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Like some of our human ancestors they were not always respectable, nor always decent. Some were sullied by slavery, some by opium, mutiny, brutality, the cruel carriage of convicts. Some have become the subjects of unlikely myths, as the retelling magnifies errors and exaggerations. 

But that does not diminish the significance of the vessels that brought the major colonisations of our country by Māori and Europeans.