Port Chalmers, along with neighbouring Careys Bay, Sawyers Bay and Roseneath is 14 km north-east of Dunedin, it is on the north side of Otago Harbour. The locality, known to Māori as Kōpūtai, is where local Ngāi Tahu sold the Otago block to the New Zealand Company in 1844. A European town was founded there when Otago was settled in 1848. It was named after Thomas Chalmers, the Free Church of Scotland leader who had died the previous year. This painting shows the early port township on a moonlit night in approximately 1850.