South Canterbury A Record of Settlement 1958 - Oliver Gillespie

Whaling Timeline based on South Canterbury A Record of Settlement 1958 - Oliver Gillespie

1828–29 – Beginnings of Shore Whaling in New Zealand

• Shore whaling began along the New Zealand coast as a more economical alternative to offshore whaling.

• Whaling season ran from 1 May to October, aligning with whale migration patterns.

1830 – Shipping and the Caroline

• The schooner Caroline arrived in Sydney from New Zealand with 800 seal skins and flax.

• The brig Caroline (100 tons) and barque Caroline (196 tons) brought whale oil from New Zealand, reflecting early whaling traffic.

1831 – Joseph Price Arrives

• Joseph Price arrived in New Zealand aboard the Caroline and later served as chief officer on the Harriet.

1832 – Weller Brothers Begin Otago Operations

• George and Edward Weller, based in Sydney, started whaling operations along the Otago coast.

1836–1839 – Price’s Shore Stations & Move to Timaru

• Price was in charge of three shore stations and allegedly moved one to Timaru.

• The brig Harriet, associated with the Wellers, was later sold in December 1839.

1838 – Massive Whaling Activity Reported

• 151 whaling ships visited the Bay of Islands in one year; 12–36 seen off the South Island.

March 1839 – Whaling at Timaru Begins

• A gang of Weller-employed whalers lands at Timaru.

• Octavius Harwood records the Dublin Packet sailing to “Temudu” with 13 Europeans and provisions.

• First note from Brown at Timaru arrives on 31 August, reporting 70 tuns of oil.

May–October 1839 – First Full Whaling Season at Timaru

• Try pots, blubber processing, and hunting operations set up.

• Noted location advantages: clay cliffs, sheltered waters, reefs, fresh water supply.

20 May 1839 – Woodham Sent to Mutumutu

• Harwood journal: Woodham sent to establish a fishery 4 miles south of Temudu.

10 October 1839 – Sutton’s Agreement for Mutumutu Station

• Sutton replaces Woodham to manage the new station.

4 December 1839 – Major Land Purchase

• The Wellers purchase one million acres including Caroline Harbour and Mutumutu.

• Payment: sundry goods worth £52. Officially witnessed and validated by Māori chiefs.

January 1840

• Edward Weller writes to George: Timaru and Taiairi fisheries need casks.

• 15 January: Letter confirms land bought at Timaru Flat from Tuabriak for £10.

April–December 1840

• April: Harwood returns from Sydney; stores delivered via Sarah and Elizabeth.

• May: 18 men at Timaru station.

• 23 September: Brown has 65 tuns of oil.

• 11 December: Spectacular arrives with Weller and Brown’s gang.

• 4 January 1841: More provisions sent.

Early 1841 – Collapse of Weller Firm

• February: News of bankruptcy reaches Harwood.

• 26 April: George Weller places affairs in trust.

• Harwood confirms station ran two full seasons and was prepping for a third.

January 1844 – Bishop Selwyn Visits Site

• Describes the deserted whaling station at Timaru.

• Edward Shortland visits on 18 January, confirms old whaling huts.

October 1848 – Mantell Surveys the Area

• Finds huts still standing at Motumotu.

• Notes primitive structures and cabbage trees.

• Alfred Wills marks “Weller’s old try works (North Station)” near Maori Park.

1849 – Charles Obins Torlesse’s Account

• Confirms whaling ships anchored near Timaru.

• Suggests Caroline Bay as main whaling site, Mutumutu as short-lived.

1857 – Captain Henry Cain Reports Try Pots

• Reports whaling pots near Whale’s Creek.

• Finds site still marked by residue from early whalers.

1861 – Arthur Rose Locates Whaling Site

• Customs official marks site at Caroline Bay.

1862 – Final Whaling Revival

• New station started at Patiti Point.

• Whale caught on 18 July, boiled down later.

• Public complaints lead to closure.

1864 – Last Recorded Whaling Act

• Pieter Kippenberger fined after cutting up a whale on the beach without paying workers.

1880 – Timaru Herald Reflects on the Past

• Article recalls early station at Whale’s Creek and how erosion had changed the coast.

 Samuel Williams appears several times throughout the Landing Place and Harbour chapter in the South Canterbury history book. His role, though not dominant in later port development, is significant in the early establishment of Timaru as a port and landing place, particularly before it evolved into a formally constructed harbour. Here’s how Samuel Williams connects to the chapter. 

• Williams had worked at the Timaru whaling station, and his knowledge of the coastline and the landing conditions would have been critical during a time when natural landing spots were all that existed.

• His familiarity with the terrain and likely role in helping incoming traders or settlers is alluded to when others recall him guiding and accompanying early arrivals.

There is a notable connection between Samuel Williams and the Rhodes brothers, who were pivotal figures in settling Timaru and establishing the Levels station (1851). Williams:

• Assisted or guided them (possibly one of the brothers) during early explorations.

• Is said to have worked closely with the Rhodes firm, potentially supporting early shipments and organizing supplies when Timaru was still a rugged beach landing with no wharf or formal jetty.

A specific early landing place is attributed to Samuel Williams. It was:

• On the southern part of the beach, opposite section 15 (according to the Gazette references).

• Likely worked only spasmodically, but it represents one of the three earliest known landing places before Timaru became a port in the formal sense.

This reinforces that while Cain and Le Cren built up structured services, Williams had been operating earlier, probably in a more informal, practical capacity tied to the needs of whalers and overland settlers.

Though later records focus more on engineers, breakwaters, and formal port authorities, Samuel Williams’s role underscores:

• The pragmatic, early settlement stage of Timaru’s port.

• The way local, experienced figures laid the groundwork before official investment and government support appeared.

• A figure caught between the old whaling-based economy and the new vision of commercial shippin

Chapter 3. Pages 29-47

The Whaling Era

The earliest recorded history of South Canterbury began when whalers established stations in the sheltered bays at Timaru, capturing the whales as they came north to warmer waters in the autumn. Shore whaling, established only where they came close to the coast, began in New Zealand about 1828–29 because it was a more economical method than catching them from ships at sea. The season officially opened each year on 1 May as the whales made their way to warm, sheltered bays along the coast, where the females produced their young, and closed in October as they returned to the cold south.

At some unspecified day in March 1839 a gang of shore whalers employed by George and Edward Weller, a Sydney firm which had been operating on the Otago coast since 1832, landed at Timaru. Whaling ships may have preceded them, hunting whales in Caroline Bay during the season, but there is no record of them or of their activities. Sealers may also have visited Timaru before that, for one of the early Provincial Council ordinances defined the eastern and north-eastern boundary of Timaru as the coast line extending from ‘Pohatukoko or Whaling Station creek to Seal creek’, this last a stream running into the sea from the public gardens at town section fifty-five.†

Pohatukoko, the stream draining a valley south of Maori Hill, is indicated on one of the earliest maps of Timaru. It entered Caroline Bay approximately under the present railway viaduct, but as a watercourse it has lost its identity, and now flows underground until it reaches the beach. Its outlet to the sea was the site from which ‘the old cart track to the plains’ left the beach at a former whaling station.

* W. H. Dawbin, formerly of Victoria University College, Wellington, an authority on whales, states that the females did not calve until they reached New Zealand or warmer waters, and their habit of remaining in the bays with their young enabled the whalers to capture them more easily. Those frequenting the New Zealand coast were right whales and possibly a few humpbacks.

† John Hardcastle, first schoolmaster at Geraldine and an early editor of the Timaru Herald, who was much interested in the history and geology of the district, expressed the opinion that a seal rookery once existed near Mutumutu, south of Timaru.

station. On this 1860 map Pohatukoko is some distance south of the Waimataitai lagoon, which no longer exists, and the whaling station was marked on the northern corner, just above the beach, of section 730, which lay to the immediate north boundary of the original 126 acres of land purchased in the Timaru district. The 'road to the plains' still joined the beach at Pohatukoko in 1865, when the mouth of the stream was a tidal creek. *

Timaru, as those first European whalers saw it, was an area of gently undulating, tussock-covered downs, through which the watercourses cut their way down to a boulder-strewn beach. Between the valleys rose clay cliffs, and reefs of dolorite extended some distance into the sea, giving protection to sheltered reaches of water along the immediate coast. To the north and south of the downs lagoons extended far inland, and the only trees breaking the sky-line were cabbage trees. There were no permanent Maori camps.

No doubt the accounts of sailors who had whaled in Caroline Bay from some of the earliest ships to visit that ground induced the Weller brothers to establish a station there. Reefs, through which there were safe openings, gave reasonable protection to ships, and sheltered valleys behind the beach provided sites for try pots and houses, and a supply of fresh water. Moreover, at Timaru there were sufficiently high cliffs on which to station look-outs to give warning of approaching quarry and from which to direct the men in the boats. After a kill the carcase was hauled ashore at high tide and immediately prepared for boiling down as soon as the water receded. The blubber was cut into lumps two feet square, put into try pots and the oil boiled out, after which it was run into coolers and then into casks. The residue from this blubber was used for fuel, which burned fiercely. The stench in and around the try pots was almost intolerable, for the beach was saturated with oil and the scraps of whale meat brought myriads of flies from the neighbouring tussock. †

Shore whaling greatly reduced the whale population on the New Zealand coast. Henry Weekes wrote in 1841: “The call makes a glorious feast for the natives who divide it among themselves, eat as much as they can and smoke the remainder.” He also suggested that legislation was necessary to control a system which “is rapidly tending to exterminate this valuable fish from the New Zealand seas.”

* The ‘old cart track’ has become, in part, the city streets of today, and Wai-iti Road, Hewlings Street and Beverley Road run out of the former valleys where the whalers worked.
† One of the best descriptions of whaling will be found in Jerningham Wakefield’s Handbook for New Zealand, published in 1848; another in the Journals of Henry Weekes, Surgeon, an early resident of New Plymou

Whalers were rough, as became their calling and the age, but they were not all bad. There is little record of the type of men who whaled at Timaru, but they were probably a cross-section of any other group, about which early opinion differed most strongly, particularly among the missionaries. C. B. Robinson, the first resident magistrate stationed at Akaroa, in a letter written on 15 October 1840, suggests that he may have visited Timaru, for he says: “When I first entered upon my duties here and at the out-stations, I found as well might be expected both English and native, but chiefly English, living in a state of license which was truly deplorable.”*

The following month he wrote to his superior officer in Wellington, Michael Murphy, first of a long line of Irish police officials: “Complaints by the natives at Timuroo, a fishery about 90 miles towards Otago, have induced me to write on the subject to the chief,” but unfortunately there is no copy of either letter or reply.

Bishop Selwyn, that stalwart of the church and the first European to visit Timaru after the departure of the whalers, had a softer opinion of them, for in 1844 he wrote: “Though I do not find many natives in this island, yet it is well worth the trouble of a visit, as a race of beings, some of whom have been twenty years upon the coast; men, not as I supposed, altogether of an abandoned and reckless disposition, but retaining even in the midst of their seclusion from all civilised and religious habits, many good points of character.”

Specific information regarding whaling at Timaru was doubtful until the journal of Octavius Harwood became accessible to the public, but now the dates of arrival and departure have been reasonably established from this valuable source which, like so many other historical documents, completely alters a story already taken for granted. Early evidence was based on such reports as those of Edward Shortland, whose letter book of 1843–44 contained statistics about the southern whaling stations, but only this reference to Timaru: “An open beach dangerous for vessels to approach — but a favourite haunt of whales. Fishing carried on only one year and then abandoned at Mr Weller’s failure.” Other evidence had as its basis the reminiscences of Joseph Price, who dictated his story to T. Quealy, of Little River, when he was an irascible old man. According to this source Price joined a whaling barque, the Caroline, in 1831 when she was trading regularly between Sydney and the New Zealand whaling grounds. Later he joined the Harriet as chief officer and brought a gang of whalers from Sydney to New Zealand.

*Robinson was appointed to Akaroa in 1840. His letters, held by National Archives, are a fascinating page of early Canterbury history.

for the Weller brothers. From 1836 to 1839, when Price left the Wellers and established his own whaling station on Banks Peninsula, he was in charge of three shore stations on the Otago coast and said that he moved one of them from Blueskin, the Purakanui of today, to Timaru. That information, combined with a brief extract dated 1 July 1840 in the diary of George Hempleman, a German whaler early established on Banks Peninsula, saying that “Miller went to Price’s fishery and got a boat’s crew who left the fishery at Timoroo” has been much used as evidence that the Timaru station existed for only one year. The brig Harriet, mentioned above, belonged to the Weller firm but on 27 December 1839 she was sold by George Weller in Sydney, with her cargo of oil, to P. de Mestra for £5,050, which suggests the Wellers were then in need of funds.

Octavius Harwood’s journal denies the Price information and makes no mention of the Harriet ever going to Timaru. Harwood named all the ships calling there and most of those trading on the coast, but he never referred to Joseph Price or to whaling gear going to Timaru before March 1839, the month in which the station began. Moreover, this journal disposes of the belief that the Wellers afterwards established himself on Banks Peninsula, is reputed to have worked for the Wellers in Timaru, but his name does not appear in Harwood’s journal, though he said that he was engaged there in 1839 and went to Timaru in the schooner Return.

Harwood was foreman and clerk for the Weller brothers in Otago and his journal, which he began on 24 April 1838, provides the first authentic information concerning shore whaling stations in South Canterbury. An entry of 28 March 1839 records how the firm’s schooner, Dublin Packet, of 108 tons, sailed for Timaru (which he spells Temudu and Temurdu), carrying a whaling gang of thirteen Europeans and their provisions.* Thomas Brown was in charge and there were two natives, Tomahawk and Rootie, included in his gang. Harwood kept a daily journal, entering the names of all ships working the coast stations, and recording all correspondence. On 31 August 1839 he received a note from Brown from Timaru, asking for provisions and reporting that there were seventy tuns of oil at the station.† The following months there is a vague reference to taking bread to Timaru, and Harwood’s additional note: “Agreed with

* F. G. Hall-Jones, of Invercargill, states that in the south the letter r in Maori sometimes sounded like d and sometimes l to European ears. Harwood’s Temudu and Temurdu would be the equivalent of Timuru. Whalers were not fussy about spelling.
† A tun of oil equalled about eight barrels. It was a measure of volume, not weight, and corresponded with the tun of 252 gallons.

Page 33 – The Whaling Era

Tyroa to take the same.’ This was the chief Taiaroa, who visited Sydney in 1839 and sold large areas of land to the Weller brothers.*

Edward Weller, who lived at the Otago stations and watched the firm’s interests in New Zealand, paid a visit to Timaru in September 1839 and remained there for six days. This was a successful year for the whalers, at Timaru and elsewhere, so the brothers purchased large areas of land from the Maoris and established a second station, possibly at Mutumutu, with a man named Sutton in charge. They must also have considered starting a general store at Akaroa, for Robinson, the magistrate, wrote on 4 November 1840: “Messrs Weller, Duvauchelle, Rhodes and Wood have each expressed to me their intention to open a store at this place.” Sutton’s agreement was drawn up on 10 October 1839. Apparently he replaced an earlier man named Woodham, for an entry of 20 May 1839 stated, “Sent Woodham to Mutomutu to take and keep possession as a fishery four miles south of Temurdu”, at £2 10s a month. This is the present Mutumutu, to which W. B. D. Mantell referred when he passed that way in 1848 and, in a sketch of the locality, showed cabbage trees growing on the curve of the hill below which there is a rifle range today. The present main railway line passes nearby.

Harwood visited Sydney in 1840, returning in the Sarah and Elizabeth which called first at Banks Peninsula before going on to Timaru, where she lay on 18 and 19 April. From the vessel he could see “Elefenure [Arowhenua], distant about 12 miles”. Strong winds blew the vessel back to the Peninsula, but she had returned to Timaru by 25 April. Harwood mentions both Sutton and Woodham in his journal, but he is not precise about the exact site of their station or whether there was more than one. Goods were landed and he went ashore to inspect the place, reporting, “Good houses built—pots set up and everything ready for whaling … we landed all hands, 14 and their luggage.” This may have been in readiness for the opening of the 1840 season in May. Harwood thought the landing place good, far better, in fact, than the one on Banks Peninsula.

By 8 May the vessel was back at Moeraki, with Harwood reporting to Edward Weller “the arrival of the barque Sarah and Elizabeth at Moirackie, having discharged stores at Price’s, Brown’s”

Page 35 – The Whaling Era

...and Te Murdu fisheries’. There were several Browns engaged at the fisheries, but Thomas Brown was in charge at Timaru in 1840 (obviously there were changes each year in both management and employees) for George Weller’s precise instructions mention this fact. Weller’s note also suggests that Price was still in charge of the firm’s fisheries in 1840, though he claimed to have left it in 1839. Harwood also recorded the names of Brown’s gang, which was headed by Samuel Williams, boatsteerer, who was afterwards to return to Timaru and become the town’s first publican. Most of this gang, nineteen in all, had come from Australia, but as only sixteen were landed it may be presumed that the other three had remained on the station site from the previous season, which whalers frequently did, cultivating patches of soil and living with Maori women as their companions. No doubt some of them made excursions to the pa at Waiteruatī and to cultivations adjoining the Arowhenua forest.*

The Timaru station obviously worked through the whole of the 1840 season, which was less successful than that of 1839. A letter written by Edward Weller on 15 January 1840 to his brother George, and now held by the Mitchell Library, in Sydney, confirms this: “The loss of the Henry Freeling is bad as we have agreed to supply fisheries with casks viz Timeru, Taiairi. … I also have bought land between the rivers at Timeru Flat from Tuabriak for £10.” On 30 April 1840 another letter from the Otago station said: “Whales have been numerous at Tairi and Timeru.” In May that year eighteen men were employed at the Timaru station and an entry in Harwood’s journal for 23 September states that Thomas Brown had sixty-five tuns of oil there. On 6 November a letter was received from Brown from Timaru and mentioned that on 29 October, presumably when the letter was written, Brown had three weeks’ provisions on the ground for the crews of two boats. The arrival of the brig Spectacular with Weller, Babington and party and Brown’s gang on board is recorded on 11 December 1840, and on 4 January 1841 Harwood shipped more provisions to Thomas Brown, who had remained at Timaru.† Two days later more letters were received from Brown, proof that, although not working, the whalers were still at Timaru.

* The full list of those landed from the Sarah and Elizabeth at Timaru, including shore hands, was: “Saml. Williams (boatsteerer), Chas. Watkins (boatsteerer), Robt. Ridley, Robt. Thompson, Robt. Stevens, John Hannah, John Anderson, John Jennett, John Peter, Joseph Clark, Peter Johnson, James Rankin, Wm. Mozaroni, Wm. Reid, Irvine Fisher, Robt. Hollis, Thos. Flood (cooper), Wm. Smith (carpenter), and John Lewis.”

\† George D. Babington was brought from Sydney by the Weller brothers in 1840 to survey land they had purchased from the Maoris and afterwards sold to settlers.

Page 36 – South Canterbury

...in early 1841. In February that year news of the Wellers’ failure reached Harwood and on 26 April 1841 George Weller wrote:

“Things have gone so cross that I have been obliged to put my affairs in trust for the benefit of my creditors.”

The Australian of April the following year printed an account of the firm’s insolvency.

Unfortunately, there is no reference to the actual date of departure of the last shore whalers from the Timaru station, but Harwood’s journal confirms that it operated for two full seasons and was preparing for a third. Robinson’s letter of November 1840, from Akaroa, concerning complaints from the natives at Timaru is further confirmation. The station must have been speedily abandoned and much gear left behind, judging by the observations of the first overland travellers who saw the site in 1844 and sheltered in some of the deserted huts. When the Wellers went bankrupt the number of whales was declining so rapidly that Sydney traders became alarmed about the future of the industry. Ten years later Captain J. L. Stokes, of H.M.S. Acheron, who was making a survey round the southern coast of New Zealand, noted:

“Not a whale spout is now seen where ten years ago that number of fish were captured daily.”

The whaling stations, the existence of which was probably known to some of the early travellers before they began their journey, were sited at Caroline Bay and Mutumutu, though Caroline Bay seems to have contained the last and more permanent station. More evidence was found there by the first overland travellers and pioneer settlers than at Mutumutu. During the early controversy about choosing a harbour, Captain Henry Cain stated that he arrived in Timaru on 10 March 1857 and that at a point “near Stoney or Whale’s Creek, the whalers used to have their pots and try out the oil”. The remains were there long after he arrived. Alfred Wills, a member of Mantell’s party which visited Timaru in October 1848, left a sketch of Caroline Bay and marked on it “Weller’s old try works (North Station)”, about twenty chains south of the native reserve which has since become Maori Park. Arthur Rose, first Customs official stationed in Timaru, inspected the beach on his arrival in 1861 and marked the site of the old whaling station at the head of Caroline Bay.

Quite possibly the whalers lived some distance from the scene of their operations in order to avoid the stench associated with such places, and that undoubtedly accounts for the group of hutments found by the first overland travellers. The site of the station in Caroline Bay, now covered with houses, streets and gardens, must then...

Page 37 – The Whaling Era

...have been a pleasant little valley running back to gentle grassy slopes, with a permanent spring of fresh water in the creek bed.*

Timaru, spelt in a variety of ways, appears on all the earliest maps and documents, but there is some confusion about its exact site. Perhaps, as so often happened, the ancient Maori, with an expansive sweep of the arm, made a gesture which included the whole of the landscape within range and called it Timaru. A rough map drawn by a Maori in 1841 or 1842 for E. S. Halswell, Protector of Aborigines at that time, has marked on it:

“Timarou, a good place for boats.”

At least two of the earliest overland visitors, Bishop Selwyn and Edward Shortland, left records which tend to confuse the issue, although they give the Maori names for bays, streams, and geographical features within the area of Timaru itself. Some of these cannot be specifically identified today. It seems that in the whaling era, and for some time afterwards, Timaru was the name given to the coastline and the sheltering bays between Dashing Rocks and Patiti Point.

The first European traveller to leave documentary evidence of Timaru after the departure of the whalers was Bishop Selwyn who reached the deserted station, during his overland walk from Banks Peninsula to Otago, late on Monday 15 January 1844. He placed the site a little more than two miles south of Dashing Rocks, which was considered to be the end of the ninety mile beach. Although the bishop meticulously recorded with a Payne pedometer the distance he walked each day, and entered every section in his journal, it would be impossible today to accept his distance between any two points because he would be obliged to make detours to avoid swamps and lagoons which no longer exist. In his journal he recorded the scene from Dashing Rocks and wrote of grassy slopes bearing southwest towards

“the deserted whaling station of Timaru”

and added:

“We passed to our sleeping place near Timaru, a deserted whaling station exhibiting the usual decorations of such places.”

Two days later Edward Shortland, who was tramping north to Akaroa, reached Timaru after an unexpected meeting with Selwyn near the Waihao River. He spent the first night at Hine te kura and the following day, 18 January, after walking an estimated distance of a mile and a half, Shortland reached Timaru

“where, a few years before, there had been a whaling establishment.”

Page 38 – South Canterbury

This suggests the site at Caroline Bay. Shortland’s estimate of the distance between Timaru and Dashing Rocks is two and a half miles, and he recorded in his notebook that he walked over the downs from the site of the whaling station to Dashing Rocks in half an hour.

Four years after Shortland came Mantell, to lay out native reserves in South Canterbury. He reached Timaru on 17 October 1848 after spending some days in the Temuka area and the following day, in boisterous weather, he found his men comfortably installed

“in the deserted huts of the Motumotu whaling station”,

after their tent blew away. He and Alfred Wills, a surveyor with his party, took possession of one of the huts, which suggests that they had been substantially constructed. The following day they walked across the downs from “Motumotu to Timaru” and to some native gardens and huts at a place Mantell noted as

“Te Upokoaterakaitauwhke”,

evidently the area round Whales Creek in Caroline Bay and the Maori name at that time for the head of the bay. The huts were probably those remaining from the whaling days. Mantell laid out a reserve and returned to the site he described as “Motumotu”.

A report by Charles Obins Torlesse, who explored South Canterbury as far south as the Waihao River in 1849, contains a reference to the whaling era:

“I was informed by the natives at Horowenua that whaling ships have frequently anchored in the roadstead of Timaru and that schooners have ridden there close to the shore in perfect safety with any wind off land when fetching oil from a whaling station which was formerly there.”

This again suggests, as most references do, that there was only one station at Timaru for any length of time, and that it was in Caroline Bay. A second station at Mutumutu may have operated for only a short time and then closed down, probably accounting for the gang which left and went to Banks Peninsula. Hut sites have suggested that other stations were established at Timaru, but a more reasonable assumption is that try pots were moved to wherever whales were brought ashore through gaps in the reefs, for it must be remembered that the configuration of the coastline, in the whaling era, was vastly different from what it is today. Buildings near Patiti Point may have been shelters erected to house the look-out men, and the huts in which the earliest travellers took refuge could have been used by all the men employed at Timaru and placed some distance from the actual site of the try pots, but Mantell’s drawing suggests only a primitive village under the shelter of the cliff. One reason why Caroline Bay was obviously the more permanent site is because there would be no danger of the captured whales being stranded on underwater reefs while being towed ashore...

Page 39 – The Whaling Era

...whereas this could easily happen at Mutumutu, despite gaps in the reefs. When encroachment by the sea in Caroline Bay caused some uneasiness in 1880, the Timaru Herald’s leading article referred to the site of the whaling station and recalled that

“23 years ago the early settlers perceived that denudation of the land by the sea, at the very spot where the railway line crosses Whale’s Creek, was then apparent.”

It was in this same place that the old whalers established their station, and it was clear that from the time the fishermen vacated this part of the coast to the year 1857 the advance of the sea landwards was steady and active.

There seems to have been some confusion, not only about the actual sites where the try pots were situated and worked, but also about the areas as they are now named. This is not surprising as the whole landscape of the 1840s bore no resemblance to that of today, when even swamps and lagoons have disappeared. Even in the 1860s the water at high tide washed some distance up George Street. Those first overland travellers all helped to confuse the issue by referring to the deserted huts at “Timaru” as the actual site of the whaling station, whereas it is unlikely, on such a limited area of coast, that there would be a multiplicity of stations owned by the one organisation. A more logical view is that the huts were living quarters and store sheds grouped most conveniently for the men working the try pots at the head of Caroline Bay and at Mutumutu. Mantell, in the various journals and documents he left relating to his southern journey, seems to have confused “Awaomotu” with “Motumotu” and placed “Motumotu” (site of the huts he sketched) north of Patiti Point. Like Selwyn he recorded the times taken to walk between the various known points. For example, on 20 October, when he continued his journey south after spending some days in and about the whole area of Timaru, he entered this tabulated record in one notebook:

“Motumotu start 10.45, te Patiti (Turaei drowned) 11, Pureora open 1.45, Otaia 4.30.”

When Samuel Hewlings made a detailed survey of the coast line southwards from Timaru in 1855, he indicated a whaling station site and try pots on the cliffs at Scarborough, with “Mutumutu Point” a little further south, but no reference has been made to it by the first permanent residents of Timaru, whereas there is ample reference to the Caroline Bay site and a little to Mutumutu. Alfred Wills, a surveyor with Mantell’s party, left a map showing a group of huts near the old try works at the head of Caroline Bay, but these were evidently those then occupied by a small group of Maoris.

There is no record of any European women going to the whaling station with their husbands, but wives of ships’ captains often...

Page 40 – South Canterbury

...accompanied their husbands to the whaling grounds, enduring with them all the hardships and discomforts of life on a small vessel in the winter season. Some of those spartan women may have made shore excursions at Timaru, but judging from the number of half-caste children reported by the early missionaries and other travellers, white women were not the companions of the whalers living at Timaru. The Harwood journal’s only reference to women is a vague one included in the entry for 28 April 1840 when stores and fourteen men and their baggage were landed from the Sarah and Elizabeth, after arriving from Sydney, to begin the season in May. This reads:

“Mr Sutton and Woodham at the fishery—Sutton’s woman had spoken to Hughes off a river below Elefenure [Arowhenua] but came on thick and saw no more of him.”

There is a suggestion here that Sutton and Woodham had remained at Timaru after the 1839 season ended.

Whales continued to frequent the Timaru roadstead long after the town was established (three were reported in the harbour area on 30 July 1884), and there was a brief resuscitation of the industry in 1862 when a whaling station was established at Patiti Point. On 14 May that year the Lyttelton Times reported:

“We hear that Mr Le Cren, of Timaru, has just started a whaling station at Patiti Point.... One whale was seen off Timaru a day or two ago.”

Three months later a further report stated that the men at the Timaru whaling station

“have been busily employed boiling down the blubber of a humpback whale....”

The whale was caught on 18 July but sank for three days before it was dragged ashore. The report added:

“Fortunately the station is nearly a mile from the town.”

This enterprise lasted for only one season and caused the community to complain of the stench. On 27 December 1864 Pieter Kippenberger, who had found a stranded whale on the beach and employed a man to assist in cutting it up, was sued for non-payment of wages. Oil was then worth threepence a gallon, according to evidence heard in the Magistrate’s Court. It was the last record of whaling at Timaru.

Caroline Bay was so called from very early times and, according to Mantell’s report in 1848, was an anchorage frequented by vessels plying up and down the coast. The name first appears in memorials concerning the sale by Maoris to the Weller brothers of more than one million acres of land on 4 December 1839.* In these documents Caroline Bay appears as Caroline Harbour and Mutumutu as Matumut Bay.

Page 41 – The Whaling Era

It has been presumed, quite reasonably but without documentary proof, that the bay took its name from a whaling vessel named Caroline which whaled off Timaru before the Weller brothers established their station ashore, but a search of early shipping records discloses a host of ships named Caroline. Some idea of the extent of the whaling industry in its heyday may be gathered from a paper read by Saxe Bannister before the British Association in London in 1838 in which he said that two years previously 151 ships visited the Bay of Islands, including sixty-four British and forty-nine American, and that twelve to thirty-six whaling ships were seen at one time “off the Southern Island of New Zealand”. The Colonial Gazette of 5 January 1839 spoke of

“New Zealand’s immense maritime traffic”

and said that the islands were

“placed in the centre of the southern whale industry and already the rendezvous of many hundreds of ships annually.”

Among these ships were at least three named Caroline, all trading between Sydney and New Zealand at the same time.

The Australian, a Sydney newspaper which devoted the greater part of its space to shipping and the whaling industry, contains the most comprehensive record of the Carolines. The first mentioned is a whaler which was wrecked on the Macquarie Islands in March 1824. The schooner Caroline, Williams master, reached Sydney from New Zealand in February 1830 with a cargo of 800 seal skins and a quantity of flax fibre, then a desirable article of trade. The brig Caroline, of 100 tons, James Smith master, reached Sydney from New Zealand also in February 1830 with 100 tuns of whale oil; and a few months later the barque Caroline, 196 tons, Swindles master, also reached Sydney with a cargo of whale oil. A barque named Caroline, the ship in which Joseph Price first came to New Zealand, was trading to South Island coastal stations in 1831. In September 1836 the barque Caroline, Samuel Cherry master, put into Lyttelton Harbour, complaining bitterly of the severity of the weather, and it has been presumed that this vessel may have whaled in Caroline Bay. Cherry was killed by Maoris two years later at Mana Island, but his vessel continued to make frequent visits to the New Zealand coast. Probably some of the first men of the Wellers’ gangs voyaged in a ship named Caroline which had called at Timaru, for long before the South Canterbury station was established and long after it was deserted, ships named Caroline traded on the New Zealand coast. Quite often whaling vessels remained out for two to three years. The Caroline, Ames master, reached Sydney in February 1839 with 600 barrels of black and 200 barrels of sperm oil after being out since 1837.

Page 42 – South Canterbury

The man who could possibly have solved the problem of naming Caroline Bay was Samuel Williams, who, by 1851, had returned to Timaru. Archdeacon Harper found him there in 1857, living with his wife “in a solitary hut” on the beach, and afterwards wrote:

“The bay, which is a pretty piece of coastal scenery, has a Maori name, Te Maru, ‘the place of shelter’; well named as it was used by the whalers as a landing place where they could try out their oil.”

Sam Williams showed him some of their old try pots still remaining on the beach and

“I spent a pleasant hour listening to his yarns of the old days.”

Unfortunately those “pleasant yarns” were never recorded by Harper, for they would have clarified the information about the whaling era and the station sites.

The first shipwreck was reported from Timaru in the New Zealand Colonist of 2 September 1842 which stated that

“The Lady Mary Pelham reports that a French whaler has been wrecked on Long Beach, Timaroo, about 90 miles to the Southward of Akaroa”;

all had perished. It is said she had a large quantity of oil on board. No record of such a wreck can be traced by French Archives, which have a remarkably full list of French whalers in New Zealand waters at that time. It was suggested that this may have been the Gustave, Captain Deglos’s whaler, but that vessel, after an absence of two years, returned to Havre on 22 July 1843 with a cargo of oil obtained while whaling in Pegasus Bay

“and the Timaroo Beach”,

which implies that after the Wellers left Timaru, whalers still hunted in Caroline Bay.†

Page 44 – South Canterbury

...Maoris obviously sold this coastal strip to anyone who was willing to buy it. At Akaroa on 12 June 1848 forty chiefs signed a deed of purchase disposing of certain lands in Canterbury, Westland and Otago to the New Zealand Company, a deed which is known to this day as Kemp’s purchase because it was negotiated by Tacy Kemp, then Native Secretary. On the hand-drawn map showing the area which was involved in this sale, Banks Peninsula was coloured green, denoting that it had already been sold to the French, and the native settlements and the number of inhabitants at each were indicated in red ink. Only one such settlement is shown in South Canterbury. This is placed at Timaru, with a population of seventy, but there is another, on the south bank of the Waitaki River, with a population of twenty natives.

Much has been made of the inadequacy of the price paid for this land, £2,000, but it must be remembered that it had been sold again and again. Among the claimants of their purchases were: George and Edward Weller, one million acres, for £52 in 1839; D. Cooper, 150,000 acres, for £40, 1839; E. Cattlin, one and a half million acres, for £30; G. Green, 100,000 acres, for £45; E. Cattlin and Co., five and a half million acres, for £60, all in 1840. New Zealand was then regarded by the Maori chiefs as already being lost to the white man. These grandiose sales of more land than existed do not complete the list. When Major Thomas Bunbury called at Akaroa in 1840 to obtain the signatures of the Maori chiefs to the Treaty of Waitangi, he reported that Sydney land traders were making preposterous claims to land on Banks Peninsula and urged that it be surveyed as soon as possible and opened for public competition. By notice published in the Sydney Gazette of 16 March 1841 Daniel Cooper, of London, merchant; James Holt, of Sydney, merchant; and William Barnard Rhodes, of Sydney, master mariner, claimed fifteen square miles of Banks Peninsula including

“the whole of the Harbour of Acaroa”

which they said they had purchased from Francis Leathart for £40. Hempleman, the German whaler, also claimed fifteen miles “east-south inland”, including Akaroa Harbour, with a purchase deed dated 2 November 1839, signed by Tyroa (Taiaroa), so that, as Bunbury noted,

“This chief was not particular how many times he sold the block.”

In 1840 P. Bryne was claiming 20,000 acres of land in and around Port Levy which he said he bought from “Chief Bogana in 1836”.

Page 45 – The Whaling Era

One brought forward by the Weller brothers, for it includes the whole of the coastal strip between the Rangitata and Waitaki Rivers, taking in “Caroline Harbour” and other features. These Weller claims were first mentioned during an inquiry in Sydney in 1839 into smuggling by whalers in New Zealand. Evidence was offered by the Customs authorities of New South Wales, of which New Zealand was then a part, that 27,700 gallons of spirits had been shipped to New Zealand in 1838, most of it arrack, an inferior quality rum much drunk by sailors and natives. George Weller gave evidence that his establishment employed 108 men in New Zealand and that he allowed them 1,000 gallons of spirits during the eight months they worked. He also said that he had purchased about 400,000 acres of land from the chiefs,

“one of them Tyroa”,

and that at one whaling station there were

“36 square miles of country”.*

Page 46 – South Canterbury

...Jacket, Two Comforters, Two pairs of shoes, two pairs of stockings, three axes in hand well and truly delivered by your Memorialist and the said George Weller to the said Golok, the said Golok did grant, enfeoff and confirm unto your Memorialist and the said George Weller and their heirs All that parcel of land situate, lying and being Tekaiho Harbour, in Banks Peninsula to the northward; to Waikakai River to the southward; the sea to the eastward; and fourteen miles inland along the whole extent of coast from the sea contained between the above named Tekaiho Harbour and Waikakai River, in the Middle Island of New Zealand, to the westward; from Lakaia River to Waitange River, the third river to the westward from the Waikakai river to the Waitange river, adjoining Mr John Hughes' purchase, to the southward; the whole extent of water frontage to the seaward, and fourteen miles from the sea to the westward, along the whole extent of the coast contained between the said Lakaia river and Waitange river, in the said Island of New Zealand. The above named land and purchase includes Matumut [Mutumutu] Bay, Caroline Harbour, Humikaha [Temuka] River, Hohaipi [Ohape] River, Rakatata [Rangitata] River to the south of Lakaia [Rakaia] and the River Waiwera between Waikakai River and Tekaiko River, in the aforesaid Middle Island of New Zealand.

That the said sale by the said Golok to your Memorialist and said George Weller was declared to be valid and acknowledged by John Toawauk King of the Bluff and Native Chief of the southern part of the said Middle Island or Tavai Poenammoo by a certain writing under his hand and seal endorsed by the said Deed of Feoffment and dated the said fourth day of December 1839.

That the estimated content of the said land is one million acres.

That the merchandise mentioned in the said Deed of Feoffment as the consideration for the said land was at the time of delivery thereof to the said Golok of the value of Fifty two pounds sterling or thereabouts according to Sydney prices.

Robinson, the magistrate, observing and reporting to Wellington from Akaroa, apparently knew of this transaction, for he mentions in a letter of 21 December 1840 that the French captain, Langlois,

“purchased of the natives an additional 90 miles of coast towards Otago, previously purchased by Messrs Weller, of Sydney”.

This was at a time when French colonists were permanently settled in Akaroa.

References to Samuel Williams

68 SOUTH CANTERBURY

As it lay beyond the southern boundary of the Canterbury Block, land there was cheaper and licences were at first obtained through the Central Government, of which Sir George Grey, the Governor, was the dominating head. This was one of the reasons why Godley was forced to adjust land prices within the block, where land was sold at first at £3 an acre, whereas outside the block, both north and south, it could be bought for 10s an acre and, in some instances, for 5s.* Although suggestions were made as early as 1851 that the boundaries of the Canterbury Block be extended, nothing was done officially until 28 February 1853 when the Waitaki River in the south and the Hurunui in the north were gazetted the limits of the Canterbury Province.

Reports of extensive coastal plain and rolling downlands, all well grassed and watered, must have filtered through to the isolated groups living on Banks Peninsula and at Akaroa, then one of the principal calling places for whaling vessels operating off the coast, and a thriving French settlement since 1840. Before the arrival of the Pilgrims, Akaroa was also the point of departure and return of officials and explorers travelling on foot across the plains — men like Bishop Selwyn, Edward Shortland, W. B. D. Mantell, C. O. Torlesse and others. News brought by such people was no doubt welcomed and discussed by men eager for information about the country beyond their own restricted areas. Moreover, some of the whalers working at stations on Banks Peninsula had been employed at Timaru in the days of the Weller brothers and they, no doubt, talked of land available in the south as yet untouched by the white man. One of these whalers was Samuel Williams, from whom Torlesse obtained a great deal of information before he set out on his exploring trip to the south in search of coal in 1849.†

It has been assumed by the Rhodes family that the brothers, when they wished to extend their pastoral activities, were advised to go south by Williams, but it may also be assumed that William Barnard Rhodes, a vigorous and active personality in the Wellington community, was familiar with the reports forwarded from Canterbury to Sir George Grey, for there are constant references to conversations with the Governor in one of the remaining Rhodes letter books. The other two brothers, working the firm’s properties on Banks Peninsula...

Footnote:
* There is no specific record of land being sold in South Canterbury for 5s an acre.
† There is no record of where Williams was born. When he died on 29 June 1883 it was said that he had been in New Zealand about forty years. He had been twice married, the second time to Mary Ann Gardner, a minor, in Timaru in 1861. He had a son and a daughter by his first marriage.

69 – THE LAND SEEKERS

...would be equally familiar with the trend of events in Canterbury by their meetings with visitors at Akaroa and Lyttelton, for news travelled fast along the waterfront of those embryo ports. All three brothers probably discussed the reports of Shortland and Torlesse with Williams and other whalers who had worked at Timaru, and the cheaper land available beyond the Canterbury Block no doubt decided them to take up runs there, in addition to their peninsula properties.

The first application for land in South Canterbury was made on 24 December 1850 by W. B. Rhodes and Company, apparently after a personal talk with the Governor in Wellington. The extent in acres was not specified, but the boundaries, so vague as to suggest that they had been drafted from the first rough map of the district made by Torlesse, took in all the land between the Otaio and Waihao Rivers, the sea coast and “the dividing range,” presumably the Hunters Hills. A second application, in the names of Robert and George Rhodes, was lodged with the Governor on 30 June 1851 and included all the land between the Otaio and Opihi Rivers and ten miles inland from the coast, excluding the “reserved land” at Timaru. These applications must have been adjusted later, for the area was reduced and the brothers finally occupied the tract of land which became known as the Levels, after a family association with a place of that name in Yorkshire.

There is no specific record of the date on which the brothers first went south, of the maps from which they selected the land they took up, or who made the initial exploring journey, though it was probably George Rhodes and he was probably accompanied by Samuel Williams. In October 1850 he was ploughing at Kaituna, one of the peninsula properties, but he had evidently been to Timaru and back, and also to Wellington before May of the following year, for on 6 May 1851 a letter to W. B. Rhodes and Company in Wellington contained also “a letter from George from Timaru” and “a sketch of the town,” but unfortunately neither letter nor sketch can be found.* All that remains is the reference to these interesting facts in the family letter book. F. W. Stubbs, who worked on the Levels run in its earliest days, and Tom Coffin, an old whaler who had previously worked at the Timaru whaling station, both recorded in their later years that Williams accompanied one of the brothers to...

Footnote:

• This and other items of information are taken from one of the early Rhodes letter books now in the Canterbury Museum and not previously used. George Rhodes possibly visited Timaru some time in 1849, according to a letter written in 1852 which refers to his visit to the south “about 3½ years ago.”

70 SOUTH CANTERBURY

South Canterbury. By June 1851 the run was stocked with 5,000 sheep, but there is no specific record of when or how they were taken south.

Letters held by National Archives in Wellington confirm the year and the stocking of South Canterbury’s first run. One dated 30 June 1851 to the Colonial Secretary informed him that W., R., and G. Rhodes had taken possession of a run at Timaru “in accordance with his Excellency’s permission as expressed in your letter of 26 December last” (that is, December 1850), and that 5,000 breeding sheep, as well as cattle, were already on the property. Alfred Domett, Colonial Secretary at that time, calculated that the area of the run, which extended from the Opihi to the Makikihi River, a distance of about fifteen miles and for about fifteen miles inland, contained 184,000 acres. Another letter, written to Sir George Grey on 30 October 1853, protesting against the action of Lieutenant Colonel James Campbell, Commissioner of Crown Lands outside the Canterbury Block, in reducing the size of the area, gives added proof of the year of occupation for it stated: “In the year 1851 we established a sheep and cattle station at Timaru — and in doing so and at subsequent periods, we have expended in the purchase of stock and land and improvements of various kinds, no less a sum than twenty thousand pounds — we were the first to enter the district and by making roads and establishing a communication between it and Lyttelton have greatly facilitated the subsequent occupation of that district to succeeding settlers.” This letter also stated that the brothers proposed taking down another sixty head of cattle and 1,500 ewes “as soon as the rivers are passable,” and also confirms how sparsely the southern district was settled in 1853, for it says, “The tract of country we claim which we occupy and have built upon, but which has been taken from us, is as yet unoccupied by any other stockholders.” Andrew Sinclair, who succeeded Domett as Colonial Secretary, replied that the Commissioner of Crown Lands had been directed to remedy any injustice that had been done.

Colonel Campbell played an important if bewildering part in the early history of the South Canterbury runs. Because of him licences were not issued for some time after several of the runs had been occupied and stocked, and he was the cause of a great deal of confusion and litigation after his removal from office. During the two years he held his appointment he never once visited the territory over which he exercised dictatorial control, territory which had never been surveyed and very little of it explored. Some explanation of him is essential, for his letters contain numerous references to the Rhodes brothers and their land.

Chapter 8
Landing Place and Harbour

TIMARU AND ITS PORT grew together, one aiding the other, but the formation and construction of the harbour itself was a long and costly struggle against the elements and the stubborn opposition of man. Both were finally overcome. Today the sounds of industry are rarely absent from the modern wharves and busy waterfront, as overseas and coastwise steamers unload and load their cargoes in an artificial harbour unique in New Zealand.

From the earliest known times, Timaru was a place of shelter for Maori canoes moving up and down the coast between Otago and Banks Peninsula and, in that sense, was a port of call, however primitive. Next came the whaling vessels which for a brief period hunted whales in Caroline Bay and later established stations on shore, but again only for a brief period.

Timaru really became a port in the accepted sense of the word when the Rhodes brothers established the Levels station in 1851. Because of the long, uncertain journey overland from Banks Peninsula, and the difficult river crossings, they organised their own shipping service between Timaru and Lyttelton to bring down stores and equipment. They were the pioneers of the port as well as of the pastoral industry.

Lieutenant-Colonel James Campbell, during his brief period as Commissioner of Crown Lands outside the Canterbury Block, was the first to mention Timaru officially as a port. In an unhappily-worded advertisement in the Lyttelton Times of 22 October 1851 concerning land to be laid off for “the town of Timaru Bay” he added “off which there is a good anchorage except during South Easterly gales, when ships should stand out to sea until they subside”. The next indication of the use of Caroline Bay as a harbour was a series of advertisements inserted by the Rhodes brothers in the same newspaper, then published at Lyttelton twice a week, asking for a vessel of twenty-five to thirty tons to make trips to Timaru. These notices appeared from November 1851 to January 1852 and with some success, for a thirty-ton schooner, the Henry, reached Timaru in January 1852, loaded with stores for the Levels. This is the first record, except of the whaling vessels, of trade with Timaru. Apparently several trips were made that year and a definite landing...

147 – LANDING PLACE AND HARBOUR

...place established. In July George Rhodes and James King went south from the peninsula in the Twins, and a family letter referring to that voyage included the information that George Rhodes had been present at an interview with Sir George Grey when the purchase of ‘5 acres at the landing place’ was discussed. In October 1852 another vessel, the Agnes and Anna, uplifted eleven bales of wool from the beach at Timaru, probably the first to be shipped from the embryo port, and from a landing place probably selected by George Rhodes himself.

When Alexander Rose was appointed to Timaru in 1861 as the first Customs agent, he wrote a long and interesting report for submission to his chief in Lyttelton. Before doing this he obtained a horse and rode over the site of the town, the surrounding country and the beach, examining them thoroughly and obtaining as much information as he could of the local history.* One sentence indicates the first recognised landing place on the beach: “The Messrs Rhodes, who were the earliest settlers in the district, had always used a landing place north of the present Government Town, considering it the best landing place around.” This was at the foot of Strathallan Street and reference will be made to it later.†

Large quantities of stores were taken down in 1852, including chests of tea, flour by the ton, boxes of raisins and other foods, and large quantities of workaday clothing, for the earliest runholders provided not only for themselves and their employees in every emergency, but also for travellers and others less thoughtful. Wool was the principal cargo for the return journey to Lyttelton — sixty bales in 1851–52 from the Levels, seventy-one in 1852–53, and 108 in 1853–54, by which time other runholders were shipping wool and other goods from the beach, and the schooners Kaka and Despatch had begun a regular service.

Those first small vessels lay off the beach in the shelter of the reef and were loaded and unloaded by Maoris from Arowhenua, originally using two whale-boats. This sheltering reef had been observed by Julius Haast when he made his report on the geological formation of the Timaru district for the Provincial Council. He noted that the dolorite sheet, usually known as Timaru bluestone, began at Mt Horrible and reached the sea in only a few places where the lava, as it ran out into the water, formed reefs which broke the force...

Footnotes:

• Fortunately this valuable document has been preserved in Rose’s letter book, held by National Archives.

• † It has been suggested that the first landing place was opposite the foot of George Street. This may also have been used by George Rhodes in certain weathers, but references by early arrivals in Timaru and the Rose report all indicate that the site opposite Strathallan Street was the more desirable and most used because of the sheltering reef.

148 – SOUTH CANTERBURY

...of the waves and sea currents. Those reefs sheltered both landing place and ships anchored in the bay. Haast observed that the volcanic rock was happily placed for the formation of a harbour, as it gave protection to ships at anchor on that long, unbroken line of coast; it left a clay bed to the floor of the sea and this gave good holding ground for anchored ships. Although Haast did not know it, the dolorite sheet provided immense quantities of rock for moles and breakwaters when they came to be built, though he recognised its use as a building stone.

By 1857 the task of maintaining the landing service, which must automatically have devolved on the Rhodes brothers, had greatly increased, for in March that year the Spray landed thirty-five tons of cargo and took on 195 bales of wool in two days. During 1856 Robert Heaton Rhodes negotiated with H. J. Le Cren, of the firm of Longden and Le Cren, of Lyttelton, about establishing a store and landing station at Timaru, promising him a quarter-acre section on which to erect the store. Le Cren accepted the offer, and sent Captain Henry Cain south to begin operations. Cain arrived on 10 March 1857 and opened a store. Le Cren followed in October 1858 to take over this first commercial enterprise in the town and, with Cain, organised and worked the first commercial landing and shipping service, this last being referred to as Cain’s, for he was obviously a partner in that business. Le Cren also encouraged the first regular call of ships at Timaru on their way between Otago ports and Lyttelton. The first Government official also reached Timaru in 1857. He was Lieutenant Belfield Woollcombe, a navy man, who became resident magistrate, harbourmaster, beachmaster, postmaster and general representative of the Government.

There is little doubt that the first landing place was at the foot of Strathallan Street. Rose, in the report to which reference has been made, went into this very thoroughly, as he had to decide on the most favourable landing place and the site for a Customs house. He added a diagram to his report showing that Cain’s landing place was opposite Le Cren’s store, which stood on sections 27 and 28 of Rhodes Town on the left side of Strathallan Street facing the sea, section 27 being nearest the water’s edge. It was immediately opposite section 1, the site of the present Customs house. Rose reported that this landing place had been operating since May 1857 by Captain Cain, “an old sailor” who “was trading between New Zealand and Australia (and had been for twenty years).” In 1861 there was considerable discussion about the most suitable landing place, but Rose reported that he would be “in favour of the present landing place in Rhodes Town, where the reefs run close inshore, the channels being distinct and easy, and not more than about 50 yards from the...

149 – LANDING PLACE AND HARBOUR

...beach. Along the coast of Government Town the reefs run far out, the channels difficult to make in the least sea, and when a swell is on, "are one mass of broken water," which is probably one reason why the whalers preferred Caroline Bay as a site for their principal station.

Cain continued to use whale-boats at first and, with Māori workmen, loaded and unloaded all cargo by hand. Some years later wooden surfboats with a capacity of ten tons dead weight took their place. By that time wooden boatways had been constructed and the landing craft hauled up these by cable and capstan worked by manpower. Later came large iron boats carrying thirty tons each, hauled up by steam engine, a system used until the whole service was abandoned. The method of getting the landing craft between shore and ship was by pulling them along surf cables which were attached to buoys anchored about 100 fathoms off-shore. The cables ran through chocks on the landing craft and men pulled the boats along them by hauling on a rope. The landing craft always went into the water bow first and returned stern first, according to J. W. Holdgate, who, as a boy, saw the last of these craft in action.

The method of loading vessels in the roadstead in 1871 was described by the Rev. Richard Taylor, who reached Timaru from Port Chalmers in the Tararua in November. Beginning at 5 a.m., the ship took on 150 tons of wheat by 4 p.m. It was transported "in large boats which are towed by a rope made fast to a buoy and thence are dragged on shore into a large warehouse by the agency of little steamers."

With the increase in shipping came a demand for more experienced men to handle the boats, particularly in uncertain weather. Le Cren and Cain therefore engaged six boatmen from Deal who had emigrated to Lyttelton early in 1859. It was a time of great unemployment in England. James Edward FitzGerald, Canterbury's first superintendent, addressed some of the 800 unemployed residents of Deal, most of them fishermen, urging them to emigrate to Canterbury where there was great need for steady, industrious men. The six who eventually found themselves at Timaru reached Lyttelton in the ship Mystery and a report stated that Le Cren offered these men the use of his boats at a moderate rental, assisted them and their families on the journey south and offered to sell them land for occupation. They began work in May 1859 under Strongwork Morrison who was beachmaster and coxwain.*

Footnote:

Morrison appears in newspapers, documents and electoral rolls variously as Strong Morrison, Strong Work Morrison and Strongwork Morrison. The men engaged were John Wilds, William Corey, Boubius, Clayson, Roberts and Bowles. Clayson was drowned soon after his arrival and replaced by Philip Foster, also from Deal.

150 – SOUTH CANTERBURY

Established runholders in South Canterbury began pressing for improved conditions in the Caroline Bay roadstead in 1857 and in that year the Provincial Government in Christchurch received two reports it had requested. Captain W. N. Millton, master of the Zingari and later a runholder in North Canterbury, wrote on 23 April that year, “comparing it with New Plymouth on the west coast of the North Island and other open roadsteads I have visited, I think that any class of vessels, using ordinary precautions, may land and receive cargo with perfect safety.” He suggested moorings for vessels of 150 to 200 tons would be of great service, for visiting craft at that time simply dropped anchor out in the bay.

A second and much fuller report was provided by Captain C. Conradi, “a master mariner of Lyttelton”, who had called at Timaru in his schooner the Highlander to uplift wool for Frederick Banks, of Miles, Kingston and Company. He told how he had arrived there in a hard, south-east wind, with a heavy sea rolling outside, “but there was comparatively smooth water along the beach”, where he anchored in four and a half fathoms. Conradi took on fifty bales of wool the afternoon he arrived at the rate of twenty bales an hour from one boat, and sixty bales the following day.

Both those reports, and a report from Samuel Hewlings, a surveyor then at work in the district, were presented to the Council, and gave an opportunity to interested parties to show how Timaru could be made the shipping centre for all the country cut off from Christchurch and Lyttelton by the Rangitata and Rakaia Rivers, and also how it could develop into a new district for agricultural settlement.

Timaru was not entirely neglected, but until 1861 information is brief from official sources and acidulous and critical from those in South Canterbury.* The best mooring sites were indicated by buoys in 1858, after Michael Studholme had pleaded for them in the Provincial Council in January, saying that unless this were done immediately another wool season would go by “without these necessary appliances for shipping.” In March the brig Acis, of ninety-four tons, left Lyttelton with one of the two mooring anchors and chains supplied by the Provincial Government. She spent three days in the...

Footnote:

As an example, Henry Sewell spent one night at Timaru during a journey through the southern district in January and February 1856, but was unimpressed. He wrote in his journal "... and for a shipping place it is a wild open roadstead, with a reef of rocks covered with kelp, which breaks the force of the waves, so that at certain times boats may come in in smooth water. As a specimen — Macdonald and Rhodes chartered a vessel to take goods down to Timaru. The vessel lay off the coast twice, and dared not come in. For six weeks and upwards she was beating up and down between Akaroa and Timaru. That will not pay."

151 – LANDING PLACE AND HARBOUR

...roadstead, discharging thirty-five tons of cargo and loading 200 bales of wool, but one day was lost because a nor’west wind prevented the boats from leaving the beach.

Increased demands for shipping apparently provoked competition in the landing service, for in September 1859 the Lyttelton Times reported that an "opposition company to the Deal boatmen has started in the enterprise of lightermen and watermen at the shipping place." This was working a little south of Le Cren and Cain’s site, possibly the beginnings of the George Street service, but little more was heard of this until a definite service began there with the increased demand for better shipping facilities. No doubt, in the conditions which prevailed on the Timaru waterfront at that time and for some years afterwards, anyone who wished, providing they had boats, labour and the will to work, could establish a landing service, since they were not governed by rules or regulations until later.

The increase in flocks and wool and the demand for supplies, particularly for building materials and fuel, meant a corresponding increase in shipping calling at Timaru, and South Canterbury’s early political representatives, both in the Provincial Council and the General Assembly, kept the needs of the port before both those governing bodies with a persistence which does them credit. The year 1861 is an important one in the history of the port. For some time the Provincial Government had discussed the possibility of establishing a separate small port at the mouth of the Waitaki River, possibly to offset the threat from Oamaru. Whale-boats had explored that turbulent stream in 1859 and the Council approved of a bonus to any steamer which would open up navigation of the river "or any other on that part of the coast". It was hoped to load wool and grain there, but nothing came of the proposal.

More interest was centred on Timaru. Despite all the vexations of boats overturned in the surf, spoiled cargo, and long delays because of weather, trade increased to such an extent that Timaru was declared "a legal quay or landing place", and Alexander Rose was stationed there as the first Customs agent. Six months after he arrived Timaru was declared a warehousing port, though the first bonded warehouses were not gazetted until 24 October 1864.* Rose...

Footnote:

By the time the two first houses were gazetted as bonding warehouses, Beswick had rebuilt his store and sold it. They are described thus: "Beswick’s Bonding Warehouse: A two-storied wooden building, cob-lined and now occupied by Messrs Clarkson and Turnbull, of Timaru, Merchants, and situated at Rhodes Town, Timaru, on the eastern side of the Great North Road, near its intersection with George Street and Cain’s Terrace; and on rural section numbered 7555. Le Cren’s Bonding Warehouse: The western portion (partitioned off in stone) of a wooden building belonging to and occupied by Mr Henry John Le Cren, of Timaru, Merchant; and situated on the northern side of Strathallan Street, Rhodes Town, Timaru, and on town section No. 28."

152 – SOUTH CANTERBURY

...established his office in a corner of Le Cren’s store (afterwards Miles and Company) which stood behind the landing place, and he remained there until he moved into George Rhodes’s old cottage under the cliffs. This had been repaired and made habitable for Rose and was rented for £50 a year. It became the first Customs house until one was erected on the present site, the first estimate for which was £650 as "timber is very dear here."

Rose made a very exact report of the condition of both town and beach. Apparently, by the time he arrived early in October 1861, three landing places had been established, though that known as Cain’s enjoyed a monopoly, possibly because of its proximity to Le Cren’s store which was described in a Gazette notice as: "An iron building belonging to Mr John Henry Le Cren, situated on the Government Reserve at the northern corner of Strathallan Street in the town of Timaru and fronting on the beach." John Beswick, whose business premises stood on the north corner of George Street, facing the beach, had a landing place opposite section 9, on which stood the Timaru Hotel, then conducted by Samuel Williams. This is the first mention of the George Street service. Williams had his own landing place further south, opposite section 15 on which stood the Rhodes wool store, but this was worked only spasmodically.

On 21 October Rose wrote: "The landing places at present used are the three most northern ones, but Captain Cain’s landing place, the most northern of all, has monopolised the landing and shipping business for some time." The port was defined in the Gazette as "a circle of one mile radius whereof the centre is the centre of the Market Place as laid down in the plan of the township." Rose thought this too large and the inland limits too difficult to define, and suggested the north limit should be section 110 of Rhodes Town, the site of the lighthouse, and the southern limit Patiti Point, thus giving the port "about 117 chains of coastline." The inland limits were to be the junction of Sophia and Theodocia Streets* on the north, on the south a line from Patiti Point along the Government road, and on the west along the Government road (now Craigie Avenue) and thence to Theodocia Street. He pointed out that the legal landing places, according to Government order, took in a mile of coastline and suggested making only two legal landing places — the first to be Cain’s, extending from the northern boundary of the port to Strathallan Street, and the second "That known as Beswick’s landing place, extending from North Street, in Government Town, to George Street, in Rhodes Town", but Government avoided the issue for...

Footnote:

On early maps this street is spelt Theodosia, after Theodosia Rhodes. The spelling has been changed through the years.

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...some years. According to descriptions and numbers given in the Rose report, Beswick’s landing place was opposite sections now occupied by Dalgety’s premises and the Loan and Mercantile Agency Company’s store. Beswick’s own store faced the beach on the opposite corner of George Street. When this and Le Cren’s store were declared suitable bondstores, both men were guaranteed locally, Le Cren by W. H. Harris and M. Studholme, and Beswick by W. K. Purnell and W. H. Simms, “all stock-owners of standing in these parts.” Rose’s instructions about suitable materials for the warehouses, which included corrugated iron as one, stated that floors should be “of asphalt, planking or a mixture of clay, cowdung and lime.” He urged the Provincial Government to take R. H. Rhodes’s offer of a quarter-acre section, No. 1, at the foot of Strathallan Street, facing the beach, as a site for a Customs house (its present site). This was not accepted until 1863 when £550 were placed on the estimates towards the cost of a wooden building, later erected by F. J. Wilson for £694 10s. Business began there officially in December 1864, but the building leaked so badly that complaints were made to the architect, William Williamson, who made several alterations.

The first overseas vessel to enter the roadstead after Timaru was declared a port of entry was the Choice, of 162 tons, with a cargo of foodstuffs and supplies from Melbourne. This was declared a promising omen, but not for long, as the business community was far from satisfied with the shipping facilities provided. Complaints rained in to the authorities in Christchurch and Lyttelton and forced the Government in 1863 to lay down new moorings, the old ones having been grossly neglected. Signal lights and a flagstaff were also erected, all of them necessary because in bad weather neither passengers nor mails could be landed. Moreover prices for lightering had risen. In his proposed estimates for the year 1862–63, Rose appended a note: “Lighterage very costly. Maories raised their prices.” Timaru, that year, was very much before members of the Provincial Council during debates. On 22 July 1863 Dr. J. S. Turnbull moved for a committee of inquiry to examine the question of erecting a screw pile pier at Timaru and Robert Wilkin urged the necessity for a commission to establish the precise spot where the jetty should be built, as “this would do away with the antagonism existing between Rhodes Town and Government Town.” The first Timaru Harbour Commission was therefore set up and its findings issued by the chairman, J. W. Hamilton, on 14 April 1864. This gave an excellent description of the beach but did little to improve existing facilities. It recommended that the existing landing, still known as...

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Cain’s, was “unquestionably the best of any on the town frontage,” but the boat service should be improved to meet existing trade; advised the Government not to take it over, but to leave it to private enterprise. The commissioners suggested obtaining a second set of boats, sheds, and other necessary gear; cutting away seven chains of the cliff at Cain’s, where it rose thirty-five to forty feet, to give more space round the landing place; sloping the beach at an angle of fifteen to twenty degrees and obtaining a steam winch for hauling up the boats. A further suggestion was that “the tail of the southern reef, forming Cain’s landing place, might possibly be improved by blasting away a few of the loose rocks which lie about 18 inches below the surface.”

The most offending paragraphs, left to the end of the report, stated that as the railway from Christchurch would reach Timaru in three or four years’ time, it was considered a waste of money to build either a jetty or a breakwater. A jetty would cost between £8,000 and £10,000, a breakwater between £30,000 and £40,000 and, as neither of them would be finished before the railway arrived, both might be useless by that time. Moreover, the shingle moving northwards along the beach was the greatest objection to building a breakwater of masonry along the reef. One interesting item in this report was that 250,000 feet of timber had reached Timaru direct from Hobart by 1863.

Captain F. D. Gibson, port officer for the province, inspected the Timaru waterfront early in 1864 and reported on it in scathing terms. His many recommendations included moving the signal pole to the harbour lighthouse and that vessels pay harbour dues to meet the cost of installation. He found that Woollcombe, whose numberless duties included that of harbourmaster, was without a certificate of authority and that men for the life-boat were untrained and unpaid.

That year plans for a new wool store to hold 1,600 bales and a new boat shed had been prepared by W. Williamson, engineer of works. Three cargo boats and a life-boat were accommodated on the ground floor where the boatways were sufficiently wide to allow carts and drays to drive in to collect or deliver goods. This was a great advance in shipping facilities, and in December that year the first shipment of wool direct for London had been loaded from the beach, with great ceremony and the disposal of considerable liquor as the first bale went on board.

Cain dissolved his partnership with Le Cren in 1865 and went on holiday to England. The Government purchased the landing service soon afterwards and began working it on 3 April 1866, but without satisfaction either to itself or the district, for the auditor’s report in...

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October stated that ‘£2,722 14s 4d had been over-expended on the Timaru Landing Service’. The grant was increased to £3,000 and another £2,500 was voted for the construction of a breakwater. The following year, however, the service was leased for three years to Captain J. F. Crawford, who imagined that this lease gave him rights to the whole beach ‘between North Street and Whalers Creek’, to the exclusion of all others engaged in the same enterprise. Legal actions drove firms south of North Street, but such landing places were unsatisfactory. In 1868 residents of the district petitioned the Provincial Government, protesting against its action in leasing the landing place, thereby creating a monopoly and increasing landing and shipping tariffs.* The service was therefore handed over in July to the Timaru and Gladstone Board of Works, which had been created in an effort to pacify South Canterbury and allow it to control its own major public works. This board continued to sublet the service for three-yearly periods until the Timaru Harbour Board began to function in 1877, after holding its first election on New Year’s Day that year.

The first board consisted of H. Belfield, Edward Elworthy, Fulbert Archer, T. W. Hall (formerly a master in the merchant service) and G. Cliff (mayor) who represented Timaru; W. C. Beswick, the Levels Road Board; John Hayhurst, Temuka Road Board; W. Postlethwaite, Geraldine Road Board; P. H. Russell, Mt Cook Road Board; and Sir Thomas Tancred, Mt Peel Road Board. Michael Studholme was appointed by the Government to represent the Waimate Road Board. Archer was elected the first chairman. In 1882, when the constitution of the board was altered, Timaru’s quota was reduced to three members, the Temuka Road Board was given two, and the following one each: Waimate County North, Waimate County South, Geraldine, Mt Cook, and Mt Peel.

During those years there was constant friction over the landing services, of which there was more than one. For example, when Cain returned from his trip to England he took over the service at the foot of George Street, and was described in the Gazette as "manager of the Timaru Landing and Shipping Service", which had been greatly improved. In 1879 this was purchased by the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company which began in 1875 under Frederic Le Cren’s management. Apparently at that time—

Footnote:

Crawford increased his charges in 1867 as follows:
Landing – Merchandise, 10s a ton; timber, 1s 6d a 100 feet; coal, 8s a ton.
Shipping – Merchandise, 10s a ton; grain, 1d a bushel; wool, 2s 6d a bale, outer anchorage; 2s a bale, inner; ballast, 7s 6d a ton; passengers by small boat, 2s 6d each; by life-boat, 20s each.

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Some of the commercial firms operated their own services, shipping their clients’ wool and produce, but they experienced increasing difficulty because the harbour works, then in progress, had caused shingle to pile up, and this widened the beach. Both the Loan and Mercantile and the National Mortgage and Agency Companies ceased their landing services in June 1881, but by that time the harbour proper was on its adventurous way.

The only relic of a landing service still in existence, since Cain’s has been buried under harbour works and railway, is the stone building facing the railway line, reached from the foot of George Street and used as a store by the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company. This ninety feet by ninety feet building of bluestone was erected by a private company in 1867, with Cain as manager. The engine-room was on the north end. Beach and highwater mark were approximately where the railway lines now run. An iron ring embedded in the stone indicates where cable secured the boats as they lay on the beach. W. Huggins installed the engine in this building in 1870, as well as a crane and reels "so as to draw up the cargo boats to any part of the landing ways."

While the landing services, their owners and their tariffs, and the wrecks which came later provided daily topics of conversation for anyone living in and about Timaru, agitation for the construction of a harbour was kept very much alive. It began in 1863–64 after the issue of the Hamilton commission’s report. William Sefton Moorhouse, then superintendent of the province, was determined to have his tunnel and railway, and concentrated on them with almost fanatical determination. There was much bitterness in the south and angry outbursts that money to finance improvements to the growing port of Lyttelton and the tunnel scheme was coming in part from a percentage of the land sales in South Canterbury, money which the southerners contended should be spent in the south. A public meeting held at Timaru on 2 October 1866 indicated in no uncertain terms the residents’ desire for a harbour. The Provincial Government was severely criticised. G. G. Russell, one of the most trenchant critics, even condemned it for spending money on a bridge to span the Waitaki River, saying it was perfectly absurd to use money for that purpose when they were "starving at their own doors for want of a port of shipment." From such meetings and protests grew the Timaru and Gladstone Board of Works, but even the creation of this organisation failed to stop South Canterbury’s demands for its rights. Every accident of man or nature became an excuse to attack the Provincial Government and demand a harbour.

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The first survey and report on such a project, undertaken by J. M. Balfour, marine engineer for Otago, was presented on 14 March 1865. This made no definite pronouncement except to disapprove of erecting an openwork jetty and to ask for more time to investigate fully the northwards movement of shingle along the coast and the nature of the sea bed. This was given and on 14 November Balfour presented his recommendations, the most important of which was the construction of a stone groyne, eighty-seven feet long and seven feet high, across the reef just south of the Strathallan Street landing place. Its shore end was to be fifty yards from highwater mark so that the moving shingle could continue its journey northwards through the gap. This experimental work, Balfour added, would provide useful data on which to base future projects. A fortnight after work began on this scheme in 1869 Balfour was drowned, but the first breakwater was completed by 24 March 1870.

Unfortunately the shingle did not continue its progress, as Balfour had hoped. Thousands of tons of it piled against the breakwater from end to end and then surged over the top. Furthermore, erosion was observed north of the groyne, thus endangering the Government landing service, sheds and boatways. A storm solved any immediate problems by wrecking the whole scheme and the shingle continued on its way unchecked. The Lyttelton Times, which opposed any scheme which did not immediately benefit the port of Lyttelton and the immediate plains about Christchurch, observed with smug satisfaction that here was proof that a harbour could never be built at Timaru.

This shingle, to which reference has been and will be made, is one of the more extraordinary features in the construction of the artificial harbour of Timaru. It is brought down the Waitaki River to the ocean where the currents turn it northwards to travel steadily but persistently along the coast.* By the time it reaches Timaru, the action of sea and movement have ground it to flat pebbles, large and small, and sand. At first this shingle presented one of the greatest problems — how to provide shelter for shipping without intercepting its movement along the coast. With the construction through the years of breakwaters, this shingle is now working for the Harbour Board by the creation of new land of which 111 acres have been created in eighty years, according to the chairman of the Harbour Board, W. H. Hall, at the time of writing, and in 1955 the highwater mark opposite George Street was 1,450 feet seaward from its...

Footnote:

The exact speed of movement has not yet been established accurately. An early estimate of one mile a day is now considered to be too speedy.

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...equivalent mark of the landing craft days.* Even the construction of a dam for the Waitaki River hydro-electric scheme has not lessened the flow of the shingle, of which 9,225 cubic yards are removed from the foreshore for crushing by a commercial firm each year.

Sand from the pulverised shingle is carried on ocean currents to settle in Caroline Bay and at such a rate that today the beach there extends seaward ten feet every year. This in itself is creating another problem not yet completely solved. It may mean the ultimate extension of the north mole.†

After the destruction of Balfour’s stone groyne, various projects were put forward but nothing material was done until the Provincial Government placed £2,000 on the estimates to enable a fully qualified engineer to report on the harbour scheme, for which pressure was maintained from South Canterbury with increasing ardour. Finally Sir John Coode, a highly qualified English engineer, was chosen, and his representative, Whately Eliot, reached Timaru on 3 September 1874 to collect data, which he did very thoroughly all along the coast between Patiti Point and Whales Creek. Coode’s report, received in October 1875, stated that the construction of a harbour was practicable but very costly. He suggested building an “island harbour,” that is, a breakwater and quays some distance from the shore to which they would be connected by a viaduct, at an estimated cost of £300,000. He aimed at giving complete shelter to shipping without interfering with the movement of the troublesome shingle. Coode’s report was laid aside but his recommendations established the fact that a harbour could be built at Timaru, and also prompted the Provincial Government to vote £50,000 towards the cost of a breakwater.

A suggestion to construct a harbour in Milford Lagoon received some support from Temuka residents and interested engineers from 1871 onwards, though there had been similar suggestions from earlier times. John Hayhurst, a Temuka land and mill-owner, was one of the principal supporters. Sir John Coode, while visiting Timaru in 1878, inspected the proposed site and condemned the...

Footnotes:

• In 1955 thirty acres of this sea-reclaimed land were being used by the Railway Department, fifteen acres by oil companies, fifteen acres by stores of various kinds, and the remainder by the Harbour Board which, in 1956, took £11,000 in rents and the City Council £8,000 in rates.

• † In September 1899 a report stated that the sands of Caroline Bay had increased considerably in the last six months: “The sand is level with the top of the old bath wall at the south end. The Borough Council, as guardians of the sands, should see about making a track or tracks down to the sands from the railway crossing at Beverley Gully.”

•  

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Whole idea, for which T. M. Hardy Johnson, a Christchurch engineer, had given an estimate of £91,927. Little was heard of the scheme afterwards.

After the abolition of the provinces in 1876, one of the first legislative acts of the General Assembly was the provision for harbour boards to control the various ports. They became legal from 25 October 1876 and Timaru’s original Harbour Board held its first meeting on 24 January 1877. Public clamour pressed for action from the Board and one of its first decisions was to obtain control of £100,000, which had been set aside by the Canterbury Provincial Government some years previously, and to take over the landing service. Meetings of the Board during its first few years were noisy with argument and bickering and its members strongly divided by their personal opinions on what should constitute protective works, the disposal of shingle and the mooring places for shipping.

The Board lost no time in calling for plans for protective harbour works, offering a bonus of £200 for the best submitted. Eleven schemes came forward and from them that of John Goodall, the Board’s own engineer, was considered the most suitable. Before any project could begin, however, the scheme had first to be approved by a Royal Commission, which was one of the Government’s restricting conditions governing the activities of the Timaru Harbour Board. The commissioners modified Goodall’s scheme by recommending the construction of a solid mole or breakwater, extending 900 feet from the shore. After this had been approved and tenders called for the first 300 feet, that of R. Allan and G. Stumbles for £11,479 6s was accepted. Work began in July 1878 and as this line of solid concrete blocks, each of thirty tons, and rubble extended seawards, all thoughts were on the action of the shingle. Soon it began to bank up on the south side of the breakwater, impeded the work of the two commercial landing services operating from the foot of George Street, and reclaimed the first land from the sea.

Then a new danger appeared. Erosion near Whales Creek was reported to be endangering the new railway line along the foreshore and John Blackett, marine engineer, was despatched by the Marine Department to investigate and report. In June 1880 he recommended the immediate stoppage of work and advocated blowing up the breakwater to save the railway line.

The Harbour Board and the public met this challenge with some spirit, for feeling now ran higher than ever in South Canterbury. Coode’s report was quoted that a breakwater, when completed, would force the current northward, which it did, as he said, and the erosion ceased. At a meeting of the Board, T. W. Hall said that Blackett’s...

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Report was ‘one-sided, garbled, and inaccurate in its conclusions, and false’. Blackett was burned in effigy, an example of the state of public opinion in those times. Hundreds of people followed a grotesque dummy labelled ‘Blackett’ through the streets, hooting and hissing, after which it was taken to the end of the breakwater where it was blown up and the fragments scattered over the bay. Edward Wakefield, then representing Geraldine in Parliament, was assured that Blackett’s report had been prompted by professional jealousy. The work went on and while the railway embankment was secured by rock filling, the second section of the breakwater was let to Jones and Peters for £11,828 and a wharf constructed on the lee side. In 1881 a third section was let by contract for £8,305 and more wharf space provided.

Goodall’s first scheme was to enclose 120 acres of water by extending a rubble wall on the north side from the Benvenue Cliffs, but he left the Board before his ideas were finalised. At this time the Timaru Harbour Board was not functioning as smoothly as it might. Public opinion was roused by the Board’s refusal to aid sufferers from some of the wrecks which were a dismal and distressing feature of the year 1882. In May that year a public meeting was held in the Theatre Royal to consider the affairs of the port, and Edward Wakefield was applauded for describing the Board as ‘a wrangling, incompetent and disorganised body’. The meeting asked for alterations to the Board’s constitution and the public expressed its feelings by the popular custom of burning some members of the Board in effigy.

By 1882 the shingle, for a time, seemed to have stopped accumulating. Then sand appeared, unexpectedly, as sandbanks formed on the north side of the breakwater, in the area which Goodall had expected to be enclosed. This new menace kept appearing and disappearing, according to the weather, like rabbits from a conjuror’s hat. By 1886, by which time F. W. Marchant had been appointed engineer, the menace was so serious that the Board considered constructing a north mole, but, for the sake of economy, the area to be enclosed was reduced to fifty acres. There was no doubt, however, about the success of the harbour, even in 1884, for J. S. Gibson became the target for a storm of abuse when he stated publicly that ‘the Timaru Harbour works are a gigantic experiment, and they have been an accidental success’. It was even more successful after the north mole of 2,400 feet was completed in 1890, though the shoaling by sand still went on. This, however, was another ‘accident’ which was to pay dividends. The sand slowly covered the rocks and roughage of Caroline Bay until it formed a...

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Smooth beach, slowly moving seawards and improving each year until today it is one of the great attractions of Timaru.

Nor had the shingle stopped accumulating. By 1891 the high-water mark had extended 200 yards from its original beach line and it seemed only a matter of time before it overtook the end of the breakwater and began to fill the harbour, by this time well established as a safe berth for shipping. A commission was appointed to decide how best to deal with the shingle problem, but the Harbour Board disapproved of its findings and a second commission was set up, only to agree with the first, that the shingle be lifted over the breakwater and taken away in barges. This decision split public opinion in the town. There was fierce opposition to the proposal. Groups met to protest and the Board was petitioned, praying that the shingle shifting be stopped.

In 1893 the Harbour Board election was fought on this issue and the incoming Board was pledged to stop the removal of the offending shingle. It contented itself with removing that which was tossed over the breakwater by the action of the sea and interfered with shipping in the basin.

By 1898 came another threat which had to be overcome. The shipping channel began to fill with shingle and some of the blocks of concrete in the first breakwater were weakened by the scouring action of the sea currents. J. P. Maxwell, then engineer to the Board, proposed building a rubble wall 3,000 feet long, curving in a north-easterly direction, from the curve of the breakwater. A royal commission approved the proposal which, with slight alterations and the staunch support of William Evans, whose energy and enthusiasm persuaded the ratepayers to consent to a loan of £100,000 to meet the cost, was started in May 1900.

However, before work could begin on what is now known as the eastern extension, lines had to be laid to stone quarries at Gleniti, three miles west of the waterfront, and the necessary rolling stock acquired. In January 1901 the Board cancelled all contracts and took over the work in hand, which was completed in April 1906. An extension of 474 feet was completed in 1915 and ended the big protective works of the harbour, 432,207 tons of bluestone having been used in the eastern extension mole alone. In 1934 the quarry area became Centennial Park, with certain rights reserved to the Board.

An interesting comment on the harbour appears in the journal of E. R. Chudleigh, who reached the port from the Chatham Islands with sheep in March 1904: ‘Timaru grows fast,’ he wrote. ‘The harbour is a success, the only one of all the man-made harbours in New Zealand that is. The only one that nature helps. I question very much if man expected any help from nature at Timaru.’