[4] Many were Irishmen who had served in the British army but for whom life in Ireland was desperate due to the series of potato famines that regularly occurred throughout the 1840s.
For married Irish soldiers the food, pay, offer of land and a cottage in New Zealand was a chance for a new life.
One of the few remaining cottages, albeit in an altered form, is on its original site at 34 Abercrombie St, Howick.
This cottage was built with the help of Maori labour for Henry and Elizabeth Rowe and their surviving three children in 1848, after they arrived on the Sir George Seymour in November 1847.
[6] Ten ships brought 721 pensioner soldiers and their families, totalling over 2,500 people, between the years 1847 and 1852.
[11] They were first called to action in 1851 when a large party of about 350–450 Ngāti Pāoa from the Thames and Waiheke Island areas arrived at Auckland's Mechanics Bay in about 20 waka to attack the city.
The cause of the aggression was the arrest of a Ngāti Pāoa chief who had stolen a shift from a shop in Shortland Street.
[12] A group of 121 Ngāti Mahuta under the great Waikato chief Te Wherowhero were also brought to South Auckland to defend the capital.