A Captain James Wilson offered to sail the missionaries to their destination unpaid. The society was able to afford the small ship Duff, of 267 tons (bm). It could carry 18 crew members and 30 missionaries. Seven months after the crew left port from the Woolwich docks in late 1796 they arrived in Tahiti, where seventeen missionaries departed. The missionaries were then instructed to become friendly with the natives, build a mission house for sleeping and worship, and learn the native language. The missionaries faced unforeseen problems. The natives had firearms and were anxious to gain possessions from the crew. The Tahitians also had faced difficulties with diseases spread from the crews of ships that had previously docked there. The natives saw this as retribution from the gods, and they were very suspicious of the crew. Of the seventeen missionaries that arrived in Tahiti, eight soon left on the first British ship to arrive in Tahiti.
