By Roselyn Fauth
Government Report "Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1875" - AJHR 1875 I H 12a 7. The great thing about this document is that it contains authentic voices from government correspondence — especially Marine Engineer John Blackett’s 1874–75 memoranda — which give you factual grounding and period tone. Below are the key elements we can weave into the blog (either as direct quotes, reworded extracts, or background context).
When you first open the .pdf Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1875 — H–12A: Further Papers Relative to the Introduction of Immigrants, it doesn’t look like much after a quick scroll through the pages. A set of tables. A handful of letters. The kind of bureaucratic paperwork that would have once sat in a file room. But when you slow down and look closely, this unassuming government report helps to reveal part of Timaru's port story in context with the country, an insight into progress, power, politics, and persistence. I see a young colony deciding who gets infrastructure, who gets ignored, and how small coastal towns like Timaru had to fight to be seen...
Portrait of John Blackett taken circa 1889 by Wrigglesworth and Binns.. PAColl-8810: Blackett, John, 1819-1893 : Photographs. Tiaki IRN: 229554. Tiaki Reference Number: 1/2-080821-F natlib.govt.nz/IE140906
Paying for Light, but Left in the Dark
One early table: Return showing the Amount of Light Dues collected during the Financial Year 1874–75 — lists the ports paying into the national lighthouse fund. Timaru appears among them, contributing £84 11s 3d.
Another, Return of the Amount received for Pilotage, Port Charges, &c. (Provincial Revenue), confirms Timaru’s provincial revenue as £1 16s 10d, dwarfed by Lyttelton’s £5,289 12s 10d. The numbers may seem small, but they confirm Timaru was officially recognised as a working port.
Yet in the Return showing Cost of Maintenance of the New Zealand Lighthouses during the Financial Year 1874–75, Timaru is missing entirely. The listed lights include Tiri Tiri, Manukau, Godley Head, Taiaroa Head, and Nugget Point — but no Timaru.
Timaru’s ships paid into the system, but no funds came back. The town was, quite literally, paying for light while left in the dark. The only illumination I think was organised by the community itself, and was a signal mast with a look out at the top. I also have come across news paper articles referring to a barrel of tar set ablaze on Patiti Beach.
Counting the Government’s Pounds and Shillings
Another return in the same document, Total Ordinary Expenditure of the Marine Department for the Financial Year 1874–75, provides a snapshot of colonial priorities.
There are neat columns of figures: £3,659 for lighthouse keepers’ salaries; £1,511 for oil and general expenses; £246 for repairs; £100 for inquiries into wrecks; £1,827 for the Naval Training School at Kohimarama. The Marine Engineer, John Blackett, appears at £300 — the same engineer who would design Timaru’s first lighthouse three years later.
Each figure in many ways was a decision. The shillings tells a story about where safety was invested and where it was not... and the reality that officals were trying to govern and spend wisely in the greater context of the country.
Lighting Their Own Way
Before Wellington provided a permanent light, Timaru relied on its own resourcefulness. I am not sure who organised it or who paid for it, but before Timaru's lighthouse arrived there was a signal mast on the cliff at the Terrace overlooking the harbour and someone was lighting a tar barrel fire Patiti Point, I don't know if this was an example of local improvisation for safety but the systems were born of necessity. The point was the locals preferred location for a lighthouse. But it was also the location of the towns ammunition supply. And I have come across a few articles where the government was offering a lighthouse, but the locals warned a wooden structure with a kerosine lamp, next to explosives may not be the best idea. The lighthouse eventually did open here, the town wanted a concrete tower, but we got a wooden one placed at the top of the Terrace overlooking the harbour.
The 1875 report records none of this, probably too much detail for the level of information it needed to provide. The locals efforts saved lives and ships. They were acts of community in what could be interpreted as an absence of the government's attention.
Training Sailors, Testing Science
The document also records a Report on the Naval Training School. This tells a little about the colony’s ambitions to train seamen and create order at sea. And in another section, there is a summary of the Results of Experimental Storm Warnings — early weather experiments that used telegraph systems to predict and broadcast gales. For Timaru it was often a big sea with little wind that caused the trouble - because if the ships were too close, they didn't have enough sea room to hoist sails and and tact out of danger - they lost their anchors and drifted into the coast.
This was the cutting edge of science for 1875, but it didn’t yet reach open roadsteads like Timaru. The larger ports received the signals first. Smaller towns had to rely on experience, instinct, and the colour of the sea.
A Voice from the Bight
There's a small piece of correspondence — a letter from Captain W. Mills, Harbour Office, Timaru, dated 14 June 1875.
“Out of the warnings that I have received and have found correct is about eight in number. As for their being useful, my opinion is that they are of great benefit, especially in open roadsteads… it puts one on his guard for heavy weather.”
And then his measured observation:
“Timaru lays in a deep bight… the wind very seldom blows home here… it is often blowing a gale of wind out in the offing, with high sea, when it is quite calm, with smooth sea, in here.”
In just a few lines, Captain Mills captures Timaru’s coastal paradox — a sheltered bay masking the chaos beyond the reef.
And if you have read my other blogs about the Benvenue disaster you'll see how this report is an insight into the power and practical struggle of port logistics and safety that Mills was grappling with.
I'm sure he recieved his fair share of nasty comments, and I wonder if they stung, did they touch on fears and doubts that he may have had about himself. Mills would ultimately loose his life trying to do the right thing in a sea rescue disaster, with the weight of this on his mind, and paid the price with his life.
Counting the Cost in Wrecks
The closing pages list wrecks investigated under the Inquiry into Wrecks Act. Between 1 July 1874 and 30 June 1875, it looks like every loss is tallied. Among them:“On the beach, half a cable’s length south of Strathallan Street, Timaru. Cause: Gale of wind. Result: Total loss.”
For Wellington, a statistic. For Timaru, wreckage on the shore. The record makes no moral judgment — but the absence of light and protection hangs heavy between the lines.
Reading What Wasn’t Written
The report never declares any port unviable. Its tone is neutral, administrative. Yet the patterns are clear. The larger harbours were already protected, while smaller ones like Timaru were still treated as peripheral.
Timaru’s name appears, disappears, and reappears across the tables — never central, always marginal. That gap became a rallying point. Within a year, the Timaru Harbour Board was formed. In 1878, construction began on the breakwater.
Where Wellington’s paperwork ended, Timaru’s stonework began.
In 1878, Blackett’s Lighthouse rose above the bay. Hexagonal and kauri-built, it shone from the clifftop on Scarborough Road. It was the same year work began on the breakwater — a local response to years of wrecks and official silence.
No longer did Timaru rely on tar and courage. The community had literally built its own light from the absence left in a government report.
Thinking About This From the Lens of a Historian
For historians, H–12A can be more than an administrative relic and be a mirror of its time. It is a record of who held authority and how information travelled. The returns and letters show a country learning to govern the sea by statistics and correspondence, while communities on the coast worked with tides, not tables. To read this document now is to see both systems at work: the bureaucratic and the human, and how one often lagged behind the other.
Documents are really interesting as they ask us to read between the lines, to notice what is present and what is missing. Who got counted? Who was heard? And what happens when a community refuses to remain a footnote in someone else’s ledger?
Timaru answered with action — a harbour wall, a lighthouse, and a legacy. So for me, what began as dry maritime data is more a story of civic determination and the light that followed.
The Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives were the nineteenth century’s version of open data. They made the machinery of government visible, turning reports into a kind of public record.
Today, they can remind us how decisions are made — and remembered. Who gets the light? Who pays for it? And how long a community must work before the glow reaches their own shore.
Side Quests
1) NZ’s First Lighthouse and Keeper — Pencarrow, 1859
New Zealand’s first permanent lighthouse was lit on 1 January 1859 at Pencarrow Head, near Wellington Harbour. Crowds arrived on the Wonga Wonga to see Superintendent Isaac Featherston light the beam for the first time.
Ten days later, Mary Jane Bennett — who had kept the temporary beacon since her husband’s death in 1855 — was formally appointed Lighthouse Keeper with a salary of £125 per annum, inclusive of firewood. She remains New Zealand’s only female lighthouse keeper.
Early lights used colza oil, later paraffin and kerosene. By the late 1800s, they revolved on clockwork, and by the 1950s they ran on electricity. Pencarrow was replaced in 1935 by Baring Head Lighthouse, and in 1982 the original tower was listed as a Category 1 Historic Place.
Pencarrow’s story is a national prelude — showing how persistence and local advocacy could push governments to act.
(Sources: DigitalNZ story by Zokoroa; Maritime NZ “History of NZ lighthouses and their keepers”; NZHistory and Te Ara entries; Alexander Turnbull Library collections.)
2) Follow the Money — What the 1875 Tables Reveal
Light Dues collected (1874–75): Timaru contributed £84 11s 3d to the national fund.
Provincial revenue (Pilotage & Port Charges): Timaru £1 16s 10d; Lyttelton £5,289 12s 10d.
Lighthouse maintenance expenditure: No Timaru light listed.
Marine Department salaries: Marine Engineer John Blackett £300 — the same man who designed Timaru’s lighthouse.
These tables prove that Timaru was paying its way but had yet to see investment in return.
3) Read the Sea — Captain W. Mills, Harbour Office, Timaru (14 June 1875)
“Out of the warnings that I have received and have found correct is about eight in number… they are of great benefit, especially in open roadsteads.”
“Timaru lays in a deep bight… it is often blowing a gale of wind out in the offing, with high sea, when it is quite calm, with smooth sea, in here.”
A voice of practical experience amid the bureaucratic tide.
4) From Whalers to Wool and Waves — The Port That Built Itself
Timaru’s maritime story began long before the breakwater.
In 1851, brothers William and George Rhodes established The Levels run and used the old whaling shore to load wool. The first settler’s cottage stood on the beach. Whaler Samuel “Yankie Sam” Williams — who had introduced the Rhodes brothers to the site — became its first permanent resident.
By 1853, the Rhodes brothers laid out a township behind Caroline Bay. In 1856, the government surveyed a rival town further south, but the Rhodes settlement prospered thanks to better landing places.
When Henry Sewell visited in 1856, he dismissed Timaru as “a miserable apology for a shipping place without wood or water.” He was wrong. By the 1860s, the beach was bustling with surfboats, cargo, and crews.
In 1858, the first landing service opened at the foot of Strathallan Street. Goods were hauled ashore through the surf, unloaded in sheds, then reloaded for inland transport. The George Street Landing Service Building, still standing today, is one of Timaru’s oldest structures.
After decades of wrecks and risk, civic leaders resolved to build a proper harbour. Work began in 1878 on the southern breakwater — the same year Blackett’s Lighthouse was completed. The community had turned its back on dependency and built its own safety.
(Source: Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, “Timaru and its Port.”)
Reflection
What began as dry administrative detail in a government archive, has become a window into our locals courage and advocacy. The 1875 report may never have intended to tell a story about Timaru... but does. Between its figures and footnotes are the trace of a community that literally found light, fought for safety, and made it happen themselves. Every breakwater, every lighthouse, every archival return is part of that same conversation.
Return of the Total Ordinary Expenditure of the Marine Department for the Financial Year 1874–75. The Department came slightly under budget.
Government Report examples of the data presented AJHR 1875 I H 12a 7
The Blackett Lighthouse was originally on the Terrace, No. 7. It was later relocated to the corner of Te Weka Street and Benvenue Ave, and then again to the Benvenue Cliffs. It is a Category II structure and the Historic Places Trust. LEFT: The Lighthouse at its current site in 2021. Courtesy of Roselyn Fauth. RIGHT: Timaru's lighthouse being relocated 1980. Courtesy of South Canterbury Museum 2014/107.73
The Timaru Lighthouse Lens on display at the South Canterbury Museum 2023 - Photo Roselyn Fauth
Blackett Lighthouse inside - pigeon holes - photo Roselyn Fauth 2025
Blacklett Lighthouse interior - Photo Roselyn Fauth 2023
Sources
https://www.maritimenz.govt.nz/public/lighthouses-of-new-zealand/history-of-new-zealand-lighthouses-and-their-keepers/
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/new-zealands-first-lighthouse-lit
https://digitalnz.org/stories/658b520bb9cb5200211926db
https://teara.govt.nz/en/lighthouses
https://teara.govt.nz/en/south-canterbury-region/page-6