PUMPING STATION ENGINEER

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27410, 24 July 1954, Page 2

PUMPING STATION ENGINEER

MR GEORGE BANFIELD TO RETIRE

LONG ASSOCIATION WITH DEPARTMENT A man who has watched the growth of waterworks in Christchurch for nearly half a century will retire at the end of this month. He is Mr George Banfield, who for the last seven years has been chief shift engineer in the Christchurch City Council’s pumping stations. When he retires he will have been in pumping stations for 33$ years, but his association with the department goes back even before that.

In 1908, while an apprentice with the Christchurch firm of Scott Brothers, Mr Banfield worked on the installation of the original gas-engine-driven pumps at the main pumping station in Colombo street. Gas was then the only form of driving power available. The old engines have long since been scrapped. Electric motors are now used to drive the council’s pumps, and diesel motors are held in reserve against emergency. After a period at sea Mr Banfield returned to Christchurch in 1921 to work in the pumping stations. At that time the daily output of water was about 3,000,000 gallons. Today the daily average is about 11,000,000 gallons. The system’s heaviest day was in early December last year, when the output reached 18,500,000 gallons. In 1921 there were three pumping stations in addition to the main station. Now there are about 30 sub-stations. When Mr Banfield joined the department in 1921 about five men were needed to operate the stations. Today the number has grown to 15. Mr BanfielU came to Christchurch when he was about 9 years old. He was educated at the Opawa School, and later took an engineering course at Canterbury University College. After completing his apprenticeship with Scott Brothers he went to sea for about 10 years. Term at Sea On the day of the outbreak of World War I he arrived in England. He planned to return on- a new ship which the Canterbury Steam Shipping Company proposed to acquire in England. With the beginning of the war, however, the British Navy required the type of ship which the Canterbury company was looking for, and Mr Banfield went to work for a year in the armament works of Armstrong Whitworth on the Tyne, where 15-inch naval guns and torpedo tubes were made.

In 1915 he landed in Montevideo only three days after the famous naval battle of the Falkland Islands. There he was second engineer in the crew that took delivery of.the 1500-ton steamship Cuyaba for the Canterbury Steam Shipping Company. They brought the Cuyaba, which had been used to run up the River Plate, out to New Zealand by way of South Africa and Australia. “We expected to be torpedoed any time, but we got through all right,” said Mr Banfield. In New Zealand he joined the Westport Coal Company, and for four years he served as second and third engineer on the company’s coal ship Canopus, which plied around the New Zealand coast.