CORRESPONDENCE. HARBOUR AFFAIRS.

Patea Mail, Volume VIII, Issue 975, 22 December 1882, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

HARBOUR AFFAIRS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —-With your permission I would like to say a few words. I see that the Harbour Board are going to have plans drawn for works they intend doing, or that they never intend doing. But still they want plans drawn. For myself I don’t profess to be either a scheming machine or a borrowing engine. If I were I might be fully employed about here and make a little overtime to boot! But I will give my ideas free for the benefit of those interested in the harbour, 25aiy person who is a member of that Board- should know what they require themselves. If they don’t know they have no right to be there. What we do want is plenty of room ; we want a safe entrance for our coasting steamer. People here will, tell me if we had money we would have a safe entrance. But people and I disagree ; I say they had money and they spoilt the entrance to Patea by water, for such a thing as a harbour we never had. But still they will tell of the great harbour improvement and the money that was spent in it. I must say that the money went somewhere, but they did not improve the entrance. If there is a mishap or an accident the blame i-< not left on the Harbour Board or the Engineer—but Lord help the Captain or the Pilot or both. It was they that did it and no one else, I would like to ask by whose authority was this wall brought across the bed of the river and almost into a spit. Owing to the way that this wall is made the water of the river catches on the bottom or before it, gets to the bottom, and rushes past behind the wall into , its old course and out to sea without ever touching the spit. When we are either going out or coming in we have to keep as close to the wall as is safe to avoid the spit—and how are we to come in with a cross sea and save our vessel. To save ourselves we have to run behind the wall which is our straight coarse. What we want, is to move that wall fifty feet at the bottom for two hundred feet up the river ; that is we want it twisted toward the flagstaff. If the Harbour Board will go down some fine evening and get into the river with their backs against the wall they might be able to shove it out of the road. All we want is to get rid of this monster of destruction that has got the name of harbour improvement. But if those gentlemen cannot push it back, there will be plenty of good working men here shortly when the Corporation have their sandhills levelled, and I am sure there are few of them that have not built a dry ditch before. Let us start from the bottom with our new wall and use the material of the old one. We come to our point of finish. This will give us the advantage of shelter from the river ; and let the Board employ the men, and whatever he may be that is to be Engineer, let him superintend the work. This may not be expensive enough for the Board, but it is all that is required for the safe trade of the port. They neither have to go to the country nor the ratepayers, but ask for a slight overdraft on the Bank, which they are sure to get. The Bank is directly and indirectly interested in the welfare of the place ; and although I might spll_ my property and go, they cannot, and it is to their interest to hold a population and to assist in every way they can. —Yours, &c., Ratepayer, Patoa, Dec. 21.

M- (■}<*•v : and has mi . anhouncenv nt. to llif i if eft ; hilt he will have a chen > .sale of meat to-morrow evening, after 8 o'clock, Mr Dale will hold an important sale of In■nsfhold furniture and n'ensiis on the 22ili instant.