By February 1839 the Weller brothers of Otago (modern Otakou) on the opposite side of the harbour had set up a saw pit which appears to have been at Sawyers Bay. By September the following year a 'big boat', supposedly the schooner "Anne", was under construction, apparently there. In 1840 Port Chalmers and the whole western shore of Otago Harbour from about Burkes to Otafelo Point was included in Te Matenga Taiaroa's sale of land to the French whalers Pierre Darmandarits and Edouard DuBern, brothers-in-law and business partners.