The colonial despatches of Vancouver Island and British Columbia 1846-1871
Moreing, Henry
Henry Moreing sailed to New Zealand in 1839 as an emigrant of the New Zealand Company and bought several of the original one-acre
sections of the area that would eventually become Wellington.1
He resisted the declarations and actions of the British government to oversee the
company as the colonizing agent for the settler society.2 Instead, Moreing maintained possession of Mana Island, which was close to Wellington,
until ownership of the island was transferred to the provincial government of Wellington
in 1865.3
His familiarity with government-New Zealand Company relations perhaps led him to suggest
to the Colonial Office in 1849 he be made an officer to oversee the activities of the Hudson's Bay Company on Vancouver Island, as seen in this despatch.
1. L. E. Ward, Early Wellington (Auckland: Whitcombe and Tombs Limited, 1928), 191-206).
2. P. Burns, Fatal Success: A History of the New Zealand Company (Auckland, NZ: Heinemann Reed, 1989), 157.
3. J. S. Hornabrook, Mana Island,An Encyclopedia of New Zealand, 1966.