GREENOCK has a long history of residents emigrating to countries far from their home town.

Readers with relatives in New Zealand may be unaware that people from Greenock played a key role in the development of Auckland.

They travelled on the Greenock-owned sailing ships Duchess of Argyle, which was built locally in 1841 by a yard operated by Moiress and Clark, and the Jane Gifford.

The Duchess of Argyle was the first to leave Greenock.

She sailed on 8 June 1842 and arrived in Auckland on 10 October of that year.

She had on board 297 passengers who had been recruited by the Church of Scotland in Greenock, Paisley, Renfrew and Johnstone. The Jane Gifford, which was built in Sunderland, and Duchess of Argyll arrived at Auckland within eight hours of each other on the same day but the former made the fastest time by 10 days. There had been intense rivalry between the captains and crews as to whose vessel would be first to reach the unknown land.

Auckland had been designated the capital of New Zealand in 1840 by Captain William Robson, the first Lieutenant-Governor.

In 1842, when the first settlers arrived, Auckland comprised little more than a few hastily-constructed huts and two wooden houses.

There were only around 300 residents so the arrival of emigrants from Scotland would have more than doubled the population. Incidentally, it is not known how many passengers were carried on the Jane Gifford.

The Scots obviously had to immediately start on the construction of additional housing and help residents develop Auckland's trade and commerce.

The Duchess of Argyle and the Jane Gifford were to meet tragic ends.

On 6 July 1844, the Duchess of Argyle was wrecked on an uncharted reef on the coast of Java when sailing to Greenock with sugar.

Peter Aikman, the owner and master who had taken her from Greenock to Auckland in 1842, was lost with all his crew.

The Jane Gifford was posted missing while sailing from New Zealand to Bombay but there is no indication when this happened, other than she was removed from the shipping registry in 1843-44.

The information contained in today's story came from an article written for a New Zealand newspaper in 1949 by Greenockian Forbes Eadie.

A former pupil of the Highlanders' Academy, he emigrated to New Zealand in 1908 and for six years traded in a schooner between Auckland and the South Sea Islands.

He served in the Navy during the First World War.

After the conflict, Eadie became a shipping reporter on a major New Zealand newspaper and later was a well-known radio broadcaster in Australia, Canada and the United States.