DESTRUCTIVE TIDES AT WESTPORT.

Westport Times, Volume IV, Issue 653, 3 May 1870, Page 2

DESTRUCTIVE TIDES AT WESTPORT.

Wo have once more to chronicle encroachment by the sea, attended with serious damage. The high tides of Friday night and Saturday morning, materially assisted by a very heavy surf have sliced off a strip of beach several chains in width, at the rear of the town, destroyinfr = several tenenents and necessitating the" Removal of others. Up to the present, Gladstone street has escaped, but its north end is now threatened, and a repetition of Friday and Saturday's sea and tide would be the means of ejecting the occupants of property probably as far as Russell street. The groin which it was hoped might have so far succeeded experimentally as to lead to an enlarged system of protection being undertaken scarcely offered the slightest resistance to the vast bodies of water that surged over the beach, and after one or two breakers had swept over it, collapsed altogether. What the breakwater might have accomplished had the trouble and expense been taken to ballast it is a very doubtful matter, as the force of the encroaching waves was altogether unprecedented. We believe ir° is the first occasion since Westport has suffered from the inroad of the sea that springtides and extraordinary rough weather have happened together, exercising a double force in expediting the work of destruction. During the past two years an extent of beach fully half a mile in width has been swept away by the gradual action of the tides, including a number of freehold sections in what was once known as Baring and Molesworth streets. Unpleasant as it undoubtedly is to glance retrospectively at what the township has already suffered, there is ground for grave apprehension that the damage hitherto done will sink into comparative insignificance with what may be expected in the future. The entire site of the present township of Westport is composed of loose sand and shingle offering very slight resistance indeed to the sea and must disappear if the hitter's rate of progression continue. Someconsolation may be derived from the knowledge that Hpkitika has been in as great jeopardy as Westport now is and has hitherto escaped, and it is to be hoped that we may experience the like good fortune. In Ilokitika, we believe, it has been found that the position of the mouth of the river has exercised a very important influence upon the beach, which has made when the river has had a northern outlet, and gradually washed away when the river has discharged to the south. The Buller has at present a southern entrance, and this may account for the manner in which the surf has recently operated on the northern beach. It is very certain that whatever the moving cause may be, the like influence cannot have operated for a great number of years, as the appearance of the beach and stumps of trees that have been recently felled within a few yards of present high water mark indicate that the beach cannot have been disturbed within the memory of any living inhabitant.