On the 27th May 1874 Nathan and Catherine Mary MINES and their children Jesse 9 years old, Lucy 7, Hedley 5, Arthur 4 Clara 2 and the baby Catherine boarded the ?Carisbrooke Castle?, 1415 tons, bound for a new life in Canterbury, New Zealand. The ship, described as "a splendid model of an iron, clipper-built ship" made a good passage of 93 days under Captain Freebody.
However the journey was not a happy one, although there were storms and it got very cold the real danger was illness.

In a diary kept by one of the passengers Michael Cook [ http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/NEW-ZEALAND/2005-07/1120523005] he reports on the 29th May - the ship was inspected ?one family has the measles, sent ashore, the bed thrown overboard.?
It was too late - a measles epidemic spread through the confines of the ship and the 490 passengers. Ten children died in July alone. August was no better and Michael Cook?s journal is reduced to the repeated harrowing entry ? Child died today?.
In all 25 children died on this voyage. Six families lost two of their children. The MINES family was one of them ? first they lost the baby 5 month old Catherine on the 15th July and then 2 year old Clara died on the 11th August. The babies were all buried at sea.

Finally they landed in Lyttelton on the 2nd of September 1874. The family continued their journey by the steamer ?Phoebe? to Timaru where they settled.
They had five more children in New Zealand ? Nathan in 1875, (they named the girls after the daughters they had lost) Clara in 1876, Catherine in 1878, James Elmer in 1880 and David in 1883.