Town and port of Wellington, the Capital of New Zealand.

Title

Town and port of Wellington, the Capital of New Zealand.

Description

General view of the city of Wellington in New Zealand.

ca. 1870

Artist

The Illustrated London News

Historical Description

Wellington is the capital of New Zealand, the earliest name for the area around present-day Wellington is “Te Upoko o Te Ika a Maui” “The head of Maui's fish”. At the time of the first European explorers of the area by Abel Tasman in 1642 and James Cook in 1770, the shores of Wellington Harbour were dotted with small Māori settlements, called Pā in Māori. Although both navigators wanted to land and explore the area, they failed in their first attempts due to the extremely strong current in Cook Strait and its difficult wind conditions. The first planned settlement by Europeans began almost 70 years later, when William Wakefield acquired large tracts of land from the Māori on behalf of the New Zealand Company, which was founded in New Zealand in 1838. In 1840, the first settlers, led by Wakefield, arrived at Port Nicholson and named the future settlement Wellington in honor of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, a supporter of the New Zealand Company. Over the years, Wellington transformed from a small, sleepy state capital to one of the country's major cultural and lifestyle capitals.