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Built in Calcutta around 1808, the brigantine Active was purchased by the missionary leader Samuel Marsden at Sydney in March 1814. Marsden, who planned to use the 110 ton vessel to help establish and service Anglican mission stations in New Zealand, paid the purchase price of 1400 pounds sterling himself. The vessel’s previous owner Jonothan McHugo, had been found on his arrival in Sydney to be ‘in a state of outrageous insanity.’ When the vessel and its cargo was auctioned, the proceeds of the sale were sent back to India with McHugo, who was for a time, confined to an asylum there. During its historic voyage under Captain Hansen to establish the first missionary families at the Bay of Islands in late 1814, the group’s leader, Thomas Kendall noted that the Active ‘sails badly’. Regardless, Marsden kept the Active in constant use as a trading and passenger vessel between Sydney and the mission stations at Rangihoua, Kerikeri and Paihia. Source: The Active and the Rev. Henry Williams, 1832 by Trevor Bentley http://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-active-and-rev-h...
Marsden purchased the brig Active and in March 1814, he sent William Hall and John Kendall to New Zealand to study local conditions and to report on the attitudes of Maori to the proposal to form an English settlement among them. Source: https://www.doc.govt.nz/our-work/heritage/heritage-publications/by-...
The Active arrived at the bay on 10 June 1814. The missionaries visited Ruatara, went fourteen miles inland, and slept a night among the Maoris. Altogether they spent six weeks in the district before returning with five natives. Among them were Hongi and Ruatara and it was under their protection that the mission was to be founded. Hall and Kendall had done their work well. Source: http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-McCExpl-t1-body-d2.html