2-889-303 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Canterbury Colonists - scene at Gravesend [in Kent], on Monday, 1850. Settlers bound for New Zealand. A dinner was given '...in the fields adjoining Wate's Hotel...the hotel itself not being able to accommodate so large a party...a regular fair appearing to have sprung up on the spur of the moment...this first squadron for the new colony consists of four vessels, the Sir George Seymour, the Cressy, the Charlotte Jane, and the Randolph, which will convey about 600 passengers out to their new homes'. The settlement was to be peopled '...by those who are of one faith - members of the English Church - and who are to begin by building schools and erecting places of worship, and thus providing for the intellectual and spiritual wants of the community...None who are really poor and wretched accompany them; such as go out as servants and labourers are men and women of good character...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.