With the purchase of a vessel by
Samuel Marsden for use by the
Church Missionary Society at the beginning of the year the establishment of a mission in New Zealand is at last possible. After a preliminary scouting trip Marsden and the missionaries arrive at the end of the year and the first mission is begun at
Rangihoua Bay in the
Bay of Islands.
A small number of
sealing vessels are operating/visiting
Campbell,
Macquarie and
Auckland Islands. At least one visits the Bay of Islands while other also make provisioning stops in
Foveaux Strait.
Whaling ships and ships collecting timber from
Tahiti and other islands in the
Pacific also visit the Bay of Islands.
14 March –
Thomas Kendall and William Hall leave Sydney on the Active,
captain Dillon, to explore the
Bay of Islands for a suitable mission site. Also with them is Tui (Tupaea), younger brother of the
Ngāpuhi chief Korokoro, who has been staying with Kendall in Sydney.[3]
25 July – The Active departs the Bay of Islands for Sydney. Along with Kendall and Hall are the Ngāpuhi chiefs Ruatara, Hongi Hika, Korokoro, Te Nganga, Punahou and Hongi's son Ripiro.[3][4][5]
20 December – At
Matauri Bay, Marsden persuades Ngāti Uru and Ngāpuhi to make peace.[2]
22 December – The Active returns to the
Bay of Islands. On board are Marsden; missionaries Thomas Kendall, William Hall and John King and their families; John Liddiard Nicholas (later author of Narrative of Voyage to New Zealand)[12] and Ruatara, Hongi Hika, Korokoro, Te Nganaga, Tui and Maui. The Active's captain is now Thomas Hansen Snr who is accompanied by his wife and son, Thomas Jnr. (see 1815, 1816 & 1817)[6][7][8][9]
25 December – Marsden preaches the first sermon in New Zealand.[3]
Undated
Having received a hand flour mill from Marsden, Ruatara is at last able to grind the wheat that he has been growing and also that which he brought back from Sydney two years earlier.[7][9]
Robert Brown and 7 others of the Matilda sail from Stewart Island in a ship's boat to search the east coast of the
South Island as far as Moeraki and
Oamaru looking for the missing lascars. They are all killed and, presumably, eaten.[10][13]
^Anne Salmond's Between Worlds describes in the narrative (p.312) the following two incidents as having taken place in 1814 (as do reports in the histories of
Moeraki and
Oamaru) but in the appendix (p.524) as having occurred after the Matilda left
Port Jackson on 4 August 1813 and implying they happened later that year, as is the case in
NZETC: The Matilda at Otago, 1813.