Page "Banks Peninsula" Paragraph 4

By the 1830s, Banks Peninsula had become a European whaling centre – to the detriment of the Māori, who succumbed in large numbers to disease and inter-tribal warfare exacerbated by the use of muskets.

Two significant events in the assumption of British sovereignty over New Zealand occurred at Akaroa.

First, in 1830 the Māori settlement at Takapuneke became the scene of a notorious incident.

The Captain of the British brig Elizabeth, John Stewart, helped North Island Ngāti Toa chief, Te Rauparaha, to capture the local Ngai Tahu chief, Te Maiharanui.

The settlement of Takapuneke was sacked.

( Partly as a result of this massacre, the British authorities sent an official British Resident, James Busby, to New Zealand in 1832 in an effort to stop such atrocities.

The events at Takapuneke thus led directly to the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.

) Then in 1838 Captain Langlois, a French whaler, decided that Akaroa would make a good settlement to service whaling ships and " purchased " the peninsula in a dubious land deal with the local Māori.

He returned to France, floated the Nanto-Bordelaise company, and set sail for New Zealand with a group of French and German families aboard the ship Comte de Paris, with the intention of forming a French colony on a French South Island of New Zealand.