Britannia – the town that never was

The suburb of Petone now sits on a site where the New Zealand Company tried unsuccessfully to found a settlement with the grand name of Britannia.

The Company’s survey ship, Cuba, cast anchor just off what is now known as the Petone foreshore on 4 January 1840. Aboard were a number of passengers and crew members whose mission was to survey the land for the colonists who would follow them.

The plan had been that the settlement would have a township in Thorndon and a rural area around the Hutt Valley. But on arrival, the New Zealand Company’s surveyor-general, Captain William Mein Smith, inspected the proposed townsite at Thorndon and realised there were problems. The town that had been planned was designed to be built on flat land – and Thorndon was hilly. Worse, it was separated from the Hutt Valley by a long, rocky shoreline which made land travel extremely difficult.

Smith realised that they would have to make a choice between the two places, and build their entire settlement at either one or the other. The Hutt Valley had shallow, exposed anchorage, which meant that it would not have a good port. It was also swampy and densely forested. Nonetheless Smith believed it was a better option than Thorndon. However, he’d noticed signs of flooding on the banks of the Hutt River, so just to be sure he, in his own words, ‘made many enquiries of the natives ... whether these rivers ever overflowed their banks. They assured me they did not. I therefore proceeded with my plan of the town site cutting lines about six feet wide for the streets which tho’ necessary was a very tedious operation on account of the extreme density of the forest.’ (1)

On 31 January 1840, the New Zealand Company settlers from the ship Oriental arrived to settle at ‘Britannia’. On board were three wealthy young men – Edward Betts Hopper, Francis Molesworth, and the Hon. Henry Petre. They’d brought many heavy things with them, including a steam driven sawmill and flourmill. They had no derricks to land them, and needed trees overhanging the water to improvise lifting gear. Because of this, the ship didn’t stop at the mouth of the river, but sailed about a mile upriver to where Smith was clearing land on the western banks.

Three weeks later, a settlement with shelter for two hundred people was complete. E.J. Wakefield described approaching it in Adventure in New Zealand: ‘A rough and new made track struck off to the settlement on the river-bank, across a miry swamp. After about a quarter of a mile of this, I reached the junction of a small creek with the Hutt; and soon found myself at the beginning of a little village of tents and huts, among the low scrubby coppice wood which covered this part of the valley.’ (2)

Other ships filled with New Zealand Company immigrants soon landed at Britannia. One new arrival was George Hunter, who was to become the first mayor of Wellington.

From 23 February to 1 March 1840, rain poured, followed by high winds. On 2 March, sure enough, the river began to rise. Soon, many of the colonists’ riverbank huts were knee-deep in water. After a day or two, one group of immigrants, mostly from Cornwall, moved to a shingle ridge called ‘The Rise’, which was soon nicknamed ‘Cornish Row’. They’d jumped out of the frying pan and literally into the fire, for late in May their entire row of raupō shacks burnt to the ground. Luckily most of the families managed to save their possessions, and were quickly offered shelter by neighbours. To add insult to injury, the same night there was an earthquake – probably the first that most of these British settlers had ever felt.

The Hutt River seemed likely to flood again, and many settlers were voicing doubts about the choice of this site over Thorndon. The passengers of the Adelaide, which had arrived early in March, were particularly vocal. Some of them even started their own settlement in Thorndon.

Finally, the agent of the New Zealand Company, William Wakefield, officially asked Smith to report on the respective merits of the two sites. Smith reasserted that he believed the Hutt was preferable, saying that the flooding problem could be overcome by clearing the watercourses and cutting flood channels, although some money would have to be raised for this.

Despite Smith’s report, Wakefield, to the relief of many colonists, decided the settlement should be moved. On 19 September 1840 the name Britannia was officially transferred to the Thorndon site. For a while there was some confusion, with both sites being known by the same name. However, with time the Hutt Valley Britannia faded away.

Today a small township thrives in Petone, but the only reminder of Britannia is a local street named after it.

References
(1) Butterworth, Susan. (1988). Petone:a history. Auckland: Ray Richards and Petone Borough Council. p 31.

(2) Wakefield, Edward Jerningham. (1908). Adventure in New Zealand 1839–1840. Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs.

Text originally published in Tai Awatea, Te Papa's onfloor multimedia database (1998).