 In September 1841 the Company made an agreement in principle to sell the Chatham Islands to the Hamburg-based "Deutsche Colonisation-Gesellschaft", but the British Government thwarted this move.However, Lord Stanley, then the British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, did agree to make the German colonists instant British subjects upon arrival in Nelson after being vetted in Hamburg first.Most of the 140 German immigrants who arrived on the ship "Sankt Pauli" in 1843 and formed the nucleus of the villages of Sarau (now known as Upper Moutere) and Neudorf were Lutheran Protestants with a small number of Bavarian Catholics.