Nanto-Bordelaise Company

A warship, the corvette Aube, would travel to New Zealand, followed a month later by the colonists aboard Comte de Paris.

Aube left for the Pacific in February 1840, captained by Charles François Lavaud, who had been appointed as Commissaire du Roi.

[2] Aware of the potential threat of losing sovereignty of parts of the New Zealand island chain to the French, during early 1840, Lieutenant-Governor William Hobson was tasked with securing the whole of the country for the British Government.

Faced with no prospect of anything more than a small colonial settlement, Lavaud left for Banks Peninsula to oversee the arrival of Comte de Paris.

Lavaud retired in 1843, and was succeeded as Commissaire du Roi by Post-Captain A. Bérard, who remained in this position until 1846, when formal agreements between the French government and the Nanto-Bordelaise Company settlement ended.