Napier's Harbour

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 74, 14 April 1937, Page 8

Napier's Harbour

A matter which has oecupied the attention of Napier for nearly seventy years has c'ertainly covered a good many of the town's yesterdays. J'ust ae tho town has risen from a very Sihall beginning so has Napier's harbour. But as the town . grew 'bigger, and the province more settled and more praductive so the harbour needs assumed more importance. The small harbour at the Spit which was in nse in the very early times had many disadvantages. A strong northerly drift along the coastline carried large quantities of shingle with it. A good deal of this shingle eame through the gap between the Spit and Western Spit, and formed a bar which prevented vessels, even the sniallest, from getting in or'out of, the harbour until- a channel wasv cleared. This sometimes lasted for days, and in the meantime silt wouid bank up in the channel and behind the shingle bar. On many occasions I bave walked dry-footed acrOss this shingle bar from the Spit to the western side. - The Tutaekuri river, which discharged into the sea. through this small gap, . was very sluggish, and rarely, except in .flood-times, had it sufficient force to sweep the shingle bar" away. In fact it piled silt at the back of the shingle almost faster than this could be dredged and carried away.

The difficulty of having a harbour that would always have a good entrance confronted the Napier Harbour Board when it was first formed somewhere in tfie early sewenties, I think, and the question of where the best harbour could be constructed has been a bone of contention to the Harbour Board and the public practically ever sinee. It is not my intention to take sides on this question, but merely to give some resume of the troubles the various Napier Harbour Board members from time to timo have been faced with. I ■ am quite sure that.all members of the board right through ,the years, no matter which haTbour they favoured, have been actuated by a sincere desire to obtain the best possible harbour for the town and district. But differences of opinion will arise on almost all mundane things, whether they be harboiirs, cures for rheumatism, baldness, ' or anything else. Not many people really know anything about harbours, marino engineerT iilg, or any kindred subject, but their lack of knowledge does not prevent them having very fixed .opinions oue way or another. Looking at the Question back through the years, one is forced to the conelusion that moet of the. cxiticiBm levelled at the advocates of either harbour has not taken into consideration all- that should have been considered. The harbour originally planned, whether at the Port or the Bluff, were planned to provide for the shipping tonnage then considered to be the niost that would ever be required, and the dredging estimates provided for a certain depth of water, as well as a fairly wide margin for wharfage accommodation. ' But almost before any harbour eonstruction had proceeded very far, larger boats were being built, greater 1 depth of water was needed and a greater extent of wharfage accommodation became necessary. This meant that early estimates .had to go! overboard, though they were" frequently used in argument. And as time went on eonstruction costs rapidly ingreased, the price of material and cost of labour rose rapidly. Here also, criticism of estimates was often not justified. Even in the simple matter of dredging the cost of clearing a top iayer of soft silt is not always co/mparable with the dredging that has to be dohe below that top 'layer, and the greater depth of water required to accommodate very large ships means much greater dredging cost, and this is further increased by having to dredge a very much larger swinging basin for the sbips to turn round in. The first engineer to the Napier Harbour Board was Mr Charles Hernian Weber, a very capable engineer, who, in addition to aeting as engineer for the Harbour Board, also, I believe, had something to do with planning the new Taradale road. Mr Weber 's son, .Mr Gus Weber, is, I am glad to say, still with us. Mr Weber believed that the travelling shingle difficulty would be overcome by construeting two piers, one on either side of the entrance, and so forming a channel which he opined would have the effect of keeping the shingle out. The result was not quite up to the engineer 's cxpectations; in fact, these were a long way from being realised. As fast as tho eastern pier was constructed the sea drift banked shingle up behind the works, thus adding to the aTea of the beach, but quicidy the shingle reached the end of the pier and went round again, forming a bar, as it had done before. The piers were still further extended but with the same result, they failed to stop the shingle comihg round and closing up the channel. This naturally caused an agitation for a harbour elsewhere. Eventiially competitive designs for a suitable harbour were invited, both in New Zealand.and Australia, £500 being offered as a prize. Two judges were appointed to seleet the best designs. These were Sir John Coode and^another. Sir John Coode was at that time recognised as one of the world 's leading marine enginecrs, and the colleague appointed to aet with him was also a very eminent engineer. A number of designs were submitted, and the decision of the two judges went to a design sent in by a Mr W. Culehett, of Melbourne, which provided for a protective mole running out from about the foot of Sturm's Gully, near where Cranby's etore now is. The wharves were to be from about the commencement of Breakwater road, somewhere near where the morgue now is. the onclosed area between there and Ihe l eastern pier being the harbour. How

ever, although the prize of £500 was paid to Mr Culehett, tHe design wa/* not adopted, the majority. of the board members at the time not being in favour of it. It was really a breakwater harbour, something after the style which Sir John Coude had designed for Calcutta, but board members thought it was in the wrong place. It ;was therefore . decided to invit e Mr John Goodall, an engineer who had designed a breakwater harbour at Timaru, to come to Napier and report upon the feasibility of a similar harbour at Napier. Mr Goodall 's report was considered satisfaotory. The plan he submitted was adopted and h loan for eonstruction was passed when a poll was taken. Thus was started the present breakwater harbour, which was begun somewhere in the "eighties, and which has served the district for over forty years. It was soon found that the strength of the waves in storm periods had been gredtly under-estimated. Heavy seas shifted the concrete monoliths" from their rubble foundations and toppled them over into the harbour. Rngineering advice was sought, and a xubble wave-breaker apron was advocated as a protection to the concrete mole, and.heavier blocks and a greater width for the mole was also' recommended. These naturally increased the cost of the work very considerably, so

that the original loan was quite inadequate to complete the work to the point originally intended and a further loan had to be raised. That too much adverso . criticism should not have been made to this increased cost will be understood when one realises how estimates? for railway eonstruction, hydro-electric eonstruction, and other similar works have been greatly exceeded when the work was done, and in most instances it was much easier to arrive at a fairly accurate estimate of cost than in the case of marine engineering, where strength of currents and of wave action are more or less unknown quantities, and when the strata to be dredged varies greatly at many points. All these are things which the average critic fails to take into consideration. However, the breakwater harbour has rendered good service to the district for over forty years. The protective mole has also kept the travelling shingle from entermg the Inner Harbour, and this also has served the town well for a similar period. The only difficulty, or Tather the chief '' difficulty, with , which the ■ Inner Harbour has had to contend has been the silt. When the reclamation of the Whare-o-Maraenui block was being carried out the deposit of silt into the Inner Harbour was not very great except at flood times when it became serious. Anyhow the total cost of silt removal from the Inner Harbour over the last forty or fifty years must have been very great though not so great proportionately perhaps as it had b.een previously. It is now hoped that the work at present being done will give the district harbour faeilitieS that will be amplw for many years.