Within a fortnight of Deans' return from the south, the Surveyor-General to the New Zealand Company, Captain W. Mein Smith, left Wellington to examine the harbours on the east side of the South Island. Deans' tour had been a private investigation; Captain Smith's was an official survey. Unfortunately, after completing the southern part of his work, covering the coast between Akaroa and Stewart Island/Rakiura, Captain Smith lost his charts, field books, and surveying instruments in the wreck of the cutter "Brothers" inside Akaroa heads on 10 November 1842. He then went by boat to Pigeon Bay, Port Levy, and Port Cooper. Without his instruments he could do no surveying. He made sketches of the harbour, however, and supplied a fairly full report to Colonel Wakefield. Summing up his report, he states: ‘Should it be the intention of the New Zealand Company to establish a settlement in New Munster, Akaroa will be found best suited for the purpose.’