The Warrior Queen .

In 1870 seventeen young red deer were shipped to New Zealand from Scotland on consignment to the Otago Acclimatisation Society. The first lot, a shipment of eight, left on the City of Dunedin . Only six of these survived the voyage. The other nine left in November on the Warrior Queen , and arrived at Port Chalmers in February 1871, with all the animals in good condition. They had been in the care of Mr Charles Bills, who had travelled the journey with his father, Richard Bills. Richard had in his care a large cargo of small English birds, also for the Otago Society, and he created a sensation when he arrived in Dunedin with well over a thousand of these birds all alive and thriving.

This was not the first journey the Bills family had made in the Warrior Queen. Charles and Richard had arrived in Dunedin by this ship in 1866, when Charles was only fourteen years of age, and from then on both these men, together and individually, despite Charles' youth, made constant journeys back and forth between New Zealand and England, caring for birds on their own behalf and also on consignment for various acclimatisation societies.

The Warrior Queen was a fine frigate-built ship of 988 tons. She traded to Dunedin from 1865 to 1874, always making good time and never sustaining any serious damage.