One of the “Charlotte Janes.”

There are not many old folk surviving to tell of the memorable voyage they made to New Zealand in the pioneer ship of the Canterbury settlers, the little “Charlotte Jane,” eighty years ago. One of the proud band of pioneers lives in Nelson, Mrs. Helen Anderson, who celebrated her ninety-second birthday lately. Her father helped to make history in infant Christchurch, for he was the printer for Mr. J. E. Fitzgerald, who founded the “Lyttelton Times,” now the “Christchurch Times.” As she was a girl of twelve on the voyage, Mrs. Anderson, no doubt, can recall the singing of the celebrated ditty of the deep, the “Night Watch Song of the Charlotte Jane,” written by Mr. Fitzgerald. The song begins: “’Tis the first watch of the night, brothers, And the strong wind rides the deep.”

The musical score has been preserved, and the chant of the pioneers deserves to be kept well in memory, as an anthem of nation-making expressing the high hopes and the spirit of strong endeavour and comradeship that distinguished above most bodies of immigrants that ship's company of the adventurous barkey with the homely old name.