HARBOR IMPROVEMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 4295, 1 December 1876, Page 4

HARBOR IMPROVEMENT.

To the Editor. Sir, —I observe in your issue of the 20th inst. that a correspondent uses my professional views in a manner that may be misunderstood. Will you allow me to set myself right ? Regarding the improvement of the navigation of the Upper Harbor I was consulted by the Government in 1857, and then advised that a channel along the north shore be dug from Dunedin to near Sawyer’s Bay, width 300 ft at head of Harbcr, at Sawyer’s Bay 500 ft, an essential part of which was that it be enclosed by training walls. Whenever I have had an opportunity I have held to this advice. I was asked to resign and did resign the Provincial Engineership on the sth January, 1869, and it was after that date that the deepening of the channel at Black Jack’s Point was commenced without training walls. If it has been a failure I am not responsible for it; and had I been consulted, which I was not, I would have objected to go on without them. I may add that prior to 1860, with the travelling mud-shoot I designed, I dug a channel 120 ft wide and one third of a mile long in three months, allowing vessels of 12ft to come up to Rattray street Jetty, where vessels drawing 6ft could only come before, and reducing the cost of excavation from 3s to 3-jd per cubic yard. Had I been allowed to go on, it is a matter of simple calculation that a deep channel up to the wharves would have now been possessed by the Glasgow of New Zealand—instead of a constant squabble and pleasant mud-spat-tering of opposing parties, wherein I, even though absent, am not Let alone.—l am, &c., J. T. Thomson, C.E. Wellington, November 27/