Shirley BHS Archivist Colin Amodeo, author of the trilogy The Summer Ships, Forgotten Forty-niners and The Mosquito Fleet of Canterbury has produced a fourth volume of Canterbury history, published by The Caxton Press.

Tracking Captain Thomas is the biography of the Chief Surveyor who located Christchurch here on the plains in 1849 instead of in the Wairarapa.

As the sub-title indicates, this book is ‘A journey in search of the unacknowledged founder of Canterbury’. It challenges the long-held view that John Robert Godley was the sole founder of the Province.

“This is part history, part biography,” remarks the author, “because it is important to understand something of the Victorian background which conditioned Joseph Thomas’s life. He lived in Canterbury for little more than two years but his decisions have affected where we live today. Shirley would not have existed if Canterbury had been developed in the North Island.”

Tracking Captain Thomas, 288 pages, extensively illustrated, with an Introduction by New Zealand Heritage Minister Maggie Barry, is available from bookshops.