Hammond was sent to the UK to learn to fly as the first Government sponsored pilot.
I don't believe this is correct.
Apparently he traveled to the UKunder his own steam, and later learnt to fly at the Bristol school. He then obtained a position with them which included the sales trip to Australia.
The NZ Government Bleriot (more of a Government aeroplane than anything military) was a donation to NZ from the Imperial Air Fleet Committee and, reading between the lines, was an unwanted embarrassment to the NZ Government.
The Bleriot was presented at Hendon 22May13. It would then have needed to be dismantled, packed, shipped and reassembled.
The reported first flight date (at Auckland) was 7Jan1914, so any Bleriot activity in NZ prior to that date would not have been 'Brittania'.
There is certainly no substantiated report of any Boxkite flying in NZ, although I guess one may have arrived and departed still crated up as some sort of customs tax avoidance scheme.
There does not seem to be any definitive biography of Joe Hammond.
He was born on 19 Jul 1886 in Killeymoon, Marton (NZ).
Joseph Joel (Joe) HAMMOND and Ethelwyn WILKINSON were married on 19 Nov 1909 in Seaford, Sussex.
Recorded as 'flying regularly since 1910', so presumably he was living in the UK prior to his flying career. At the time of his death he had reportedly logged 6000hrs, a stupendous amount by the standards of the day.
Another report states "Sydney Smith nephew of Sir George White (Bristol Aeroplane Co. Founder) was sent to Australia to sell Bristol Boxkites (powered by seven cylinder Gnome rotary engines), to the Australian Government for defence purposes. He arrived with two machines (production numbers 10 and 11) and one of his test pilots Joseph Hammond a New Zealander"
So apparently Hammond secured a job with Bristol after qualification.
It seems that Hammond continued to carry out some work for Bristol during WW1, and then went to the USA as part of the team to prepare the Bristol Fighter for US production as the Curtis O-1
This effort ran into difficulties, as the Liberty engine was an unhappy match with the F2B airframe.
"Circumstances of death: On returning to Minneapolis at about 1730hrs 22 Sep 1918 after giving a flying display at Greenfield in support of the Fourth Liberty Loan War Bond Drive, he entered a right hand spin from 600 feet, its left wing striking a tree before crashing in a cornfield of the Marion County Poor Farm near its boundary with the Indianapolis Speedway. One of the passengers, J.L. Kinder, was killed on impact while the other, Lt. R.W. Pickett of the U.S. Army Air Service was seriously injured but recovered. The pilot (Joseph Joel Hammond) also died in the crash and was buried in Indianapolis on the 26th Sep 1918."
I'd suggest he was going to be in trouble on the home front too....
Highly likely.
It would appear that his wife was not still around at this time, as a further report states:
"British Aviator. Captain Hammond, who flew in the Royal Air Force during the First World War, was killed in a crash near the Indianapolis Motor Speedway while participating in an air race. When no next of kin could be identified, Carl Fisher, a cofounder of the Speedway, arranged for him to be interred in his mausoleum."
Presumably the reference to an air race is in error.
The 1995 mock-documentary "Forgotten Silver" by Costa Botes and Peter Jackson attempted to date the Pearse flight by zooming in on a newspaper tucked into the back pocket of one of Pearse's helpers, and showing the date on the paper as 1902.