Restored 1923 New Brighton Landscape

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This is a restoration of the unattributed painting on the cover of a 1923 pamphlet promoting the attractions of Christchurch's marine suburb of New Brighton. In this northerly aspect of the beach, the 1894 Pier can be seen in the middle distance.

Including local information and a history of the area, the extensively illustrated 64 page booklet was published by the New Brighton Publicity Committee in association with the Canterbury Progress League. A 6.3 Megabyte copy, in PDF format, can be downloaded from the Christchurch City Libraries web site.


Mr CH would be utterly content to spend his days tarting up old pics :)

Addendum

There would appear to be a convenient degree of artistic license in the painting; as Sarndra observed the high-heel shoes of the principal character don't even sink in to the sand. Steven's comment that the image may have been reversed (probably for the sake of compositional balance on the pamphlet cover) appears quite correct; the rounded hills in the distance look very much like the Port Hills and fit well with a southerly aspect if the image is reversed. Below is a reversed copy of the painting (the old bathing sheds are now shown in their correct position) and also a similar southerly view in a postcard of the same era.

An Elderly Visitor to Port Lyttelton

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Continuing to enjoy her 83 year working career, the 49 metre floating crane Hikitea arrived in the port at 1.35 am on the 5th of June, 2009.

Departing from her home port of Wellington for the first time since her 82 day delivery voyage from Glasgow in 1926, the Hikitea will spend a week at Lyttelton, undergoing hull plate replacement and tailshaft repairs in the graving dock.


Owned by the Maritime Heritage Trust since 2006, the 746 ton floating crane was built by Sir William Arrol and Company Ltd, whose greatest claim to fame is probably the 1894 construction of London's iconic Tower Bridge.

Photo credit: Second photograph Kiwi Frenzy On Location, third to fifth photographs Cranes Today Magazine

1929 Electric Railcar Service to Lyttelton

A 1929 English Electric Company's locomotive arriving at Lyttelton.

The service was inaugurated at 3 pm on Thursday, the 14th of February, 1929. Early Canterbury settlers and guests of the New Zealand Government Railways Department were issued with free passes on that day.

Twenty return services were provided each day, with the journey taking about seventeen minutes. Commenced in 1867, passenger services between Christchurch and Lyttelton ended in 1976.

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Addendum (further to a reader's comment)

The southeast corner of Manchester & Tuam Streets

By 1872 the corner was occupied by the Timber & Coal merchant Robert England (1839-1919), father of the England brothers of architectural fame. By 1900 (above) the business was owned by Wood and Laurie


First established at Lyttelton in 1851, the premises of J. M. Heywood & Company Ltd were built on the corner between 1908 and 1910 (centre, middle distance). The Customs, Insurance, and General Commission Agent's building was demolished about 1986.


Situated immediately to the East of the Heywood building, at 224-226 Tuam Street, was the premises of the general merchants E. W. Pidgeon & Company. Its last incarnation was as Federal Motors, service and parts agents for Renault, Peugot and Daihatsu cars. The building was demolished about 1997.


1950 aerial photograph of the Heywood and Pidgeon buildings.


1984 aerial photograph of the Heywood and Pidgeon buildings.

Wakatu: first chapter in a family saga of maritime loss

The last of the Lyttelton to Wellington passenger ferries to make the 280 kilometere voyage via Kaikoura ended her eventful 45 year career very close to where she had previously attended the tragic wreck of notable predecessor. Her demise would be the first chapter in a tale of the loss of two inter-island ferries by father and son captains


At the beginning of November 1878 John Currie Moutray and Robert Martin Crosbie of Nelson's Soho Foundry laid the keel of a cargo-passenger vessel for the local shipping enterprise of the Cross brothers and Burchard Franzen. Completed for a contract price of £6,000 and christened with the Maori name for Nelson Bay, the Wakatu was launched on the evening of the 6th of July 1879 from the foundry's Bridge Street slipway, near the Nelson Post Office.

In as much as Moutray and Crosbie had previously built a replacement engine and boiler for Captain G. Cross's paddle steamer Result, it may be surmised that they also constructed the compound steam engines for the propulsion and steam winches of the new vessel. With a boiler pressure of 65 pounds of steam per square inch, her engine developed a nominal 25 horsepower, therby maintaining a service speed of 9 knots.

Built for Cross and Company's Nelson to Wellington and Wanganui service, the 90 ton (78 tons net) steamship, was originally 32.23 metres in length, with a beam of 5.5 metres and a draft of only 1.8 metres. Up to a hundred tons of freight could be carried in her 6 metre deep hold. Fitted out at the Corporation Wharf as gaff rigged schooner, she could initially accommodate about 40 first class passengers. With the main saloon aft, there was also a seperate ladies' cabin amidships on the main deck. Further accommodation for second-class passengers was forward on the lower deck.

In the second week of November 1879, under the command of Captain Charles Evans, the Wakatu commenced her maiden voyage to Wanganui, returning to her port of registry via the capital a week later. But her first career would come to an abrupt end little more than two years later when she was stranded while crossing the Patea bar. An attempt to get her off with the evening tide failed, and she crashed violently against the cliff, a portion of which fell upon the ship. The hull therby being stove in, the Wakatu filled with water and became a total loss.


Sold to Levin & Company of Wellington, the vessel underwent a major reconstruction. With the hull extended by 4.25 metres and the gross displacement increased to 157 tons, the main deck passenger accommodation was significantly enlarged (above). Transferring her registry to the capital, William Levin put the rebuilt steamer on the Wellington to Lyttelton run, a service that the Wakatu would perform with reliability for longer than any other vessel.


Wakatu at her usual Lyttelton berth on the Ferry wharf.
In an omen of what would be her own and adjacent fate, Wakatu attended the wreck of the Lyttelton bound 228 ton coastal steamer Taiaroa, which went ashore just to the north of Waipapa Point on the Kaikoura coast in April 1886. With only 14 saved, 34 lives were lost and the Wakatu returned to Lyttelton with an awful cargo of coffins.

Apart from a night time collision with the steamer Storm off Motunau Island in March 1909, which left a gaping hole in her bow, the next two decades were fairly uneventful for the Wakatu. The highlight being when the Australian Poet Henry Lawson and his wife took passage aboard her in May 1897. Excitement returned in the early days of the First World War when she was was fired upon by the guns in the fortress on Ripapa Island in Lyttelton Harbour for failing to observe the War Regulations.


In the later ownership of the Wellington based Wakatu Shipping Company, she encountered her final mishap in thick fog at 5.00 am on the 6th of September 1924, while sailing from Wellington to Kaikoura and Lyttelton. An unusually strong current threw her high onto the beach on the northern side of Waipapa Point, very close to the wreck of the Taiaroa (below).


The remains of the Taiaroa as seen from the stranded Wakatu
The Wakatu was under the command of her regular master, Captain David Robertson, who was exonerated by the Court of Inquiry, which found that when the weather came up thick, with fine rain, a south-east wind, and a heavy swell, the vessel was at least four miles off shore, which was a safe position; that in altering the course at 2:30 a.m., and 2:40 a.m., the master adopted a safe and prudent course which, under ordinary circumstances, would have carried the Wakatu well clear of Waipapa Point, and that the casualty was caused by an unusually strong set owing to the action of the wind and tide, and to the fact that the vessel was lightly laden.


The crew of the Wakatu still aboard the stranded vessel.
Four years later Captain Robertson would be dismissed for trying to conceal another mishap, when his next command went ashore on Banks Peninsula. In a curious quirk of fate, David Robertson's son Captain Gordon Robertson would be in command of the inter-island ferry Wahine, when she sank in April 1968, with a loss of 51 lives.


Holed and buckled near the stern, the ships' resting place was so far up on the beach as to make salvage impossible, but her location greatly simplified the recovery of the cargo. Several attempts were made to refloat the ship, but were unsuccessful, and she was abandoned as a total loss on September the 12th.

Only a few hundred yards from the road, the Wakatu was still a photographic opportunity in March 1927.

Subsequently cut up for scrap where she lay, only her keel now remains to be seen on the beach.


Long supplanted by larger and faster vessels in the Lyttelton-Wellington service and the development of road and rail transport along the South Island's north-eastern coast, the loss of the Wakatu marked the end of Kaikoura as any more than a fishing harbour, but the long lost vessel is still commemorated in the name of that township's Wakatu Quay.

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Many thanks to Steven McLachlan of the Shades Stamp Shop, the late Frederick William Weidner (Kaikoura Star photographer), Graham Stewart, the Nelson Examiner newspaper, the National Library of New Zealand, et al.

Podcast: Migrant Passenger Lists

With specific reference to New Zealand and the lack of lists of migrants arriving via Australia, this 53 minute talk from the UK's National Archives, will be of particular interest to family historians.

In Every journey has two ends: using passenger lists, Chris Watts reveals the benefits of using both arrival and departure records when searching for details of our migrant ancestors, as well as demonstrating how the shortcomings of content, indexing and accessibility can be minimised.

Download the 37 Mb audio file (every-journey-has-two-ends.mp3)

Photo: attended by the extant 1907 tug Lyttelton, RMS Rangitiki (1928-1962) docks at Lyttelton's Gladstone pier after a five week maiden voyage from London via Curacao and the Panama Canal.

Early Christchurch Electric Vehicles

The diasporical and widely appreciated The New Zealand Journal has recently featured a short post entitled Christchurch City Council Belt-Tightening?, in which it's wondered if there might be any advantage to the Council ordering up from storage its electric truck fleet from the early 1920s, which could have the advantage of enabling the Council to meet its greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The post includes this Alexander Turnbull Library image by The Press newspaper photographer Samuel Heath Head.


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By 1915 the Council's Municipal Electricity Department in Armagh Street was charging car batteries overnight, when cheaper off-peak rates were offered between 10 pm and 7 am. The two 100 Kilowatt generators were driven by a pair of steam engines powered by the Council's refuse destructor. In 1921, at the peak of their popularity, the M.E.D. was charging the batteries of 51 vehicles, of which 40 were privately owned, with the other 11 belonging to the Council. The City Council's Municipal Electricity Department even offered hire-purchase agreements to assist companies and individuals to purchase electric vehicles.


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In this elevated westerly view of Bealey Avenue near the Carlton Mill Bridge can be seen the city's entire fleet of electric vehicles. The photograph can be dated to 1926 by the construction of the extent Fleming House at the corner of Park Terrace (Left).


Above: photographed on Park Terrace is the circa 1922 American Walker electric lorry of Wardell Brothers, the Cashel Street Grocers. To the Left is the extant 1915 Summers house. Below: also at the same location is the electric lorry of Sharpe Brothers, aerated water and cordial manufacturers. Both of these photographs were also taken by Samuel Heath Head.



Photo credits:

1926 electric vehicle fleet; Municipal Electricity Department archive, Orion New Zealand Ltd

Sharpe Brothers lorry; Alexander Turnbull Library, reference number: 1/1-011062-G

Wardell Brothers lorry; Alexander Turnbull Library, reference number: 1/1-007411-G

U.S. Navy at Lyttelton 1925

The period following the First World War was conspicuous for the number of warships visiting the port of Lyttelton; state visits, showing the flag exercises, good-will cruises, massed deployments and demonstrations of strategic reach saw extravagant numbers of naval vessels in the harbour during the years after the Great War ended.

One of the more impressive visits occured when a fleet fourteen vessels, including Clemson class destroyers and an Omaha class light cruiser of U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, visited the port between the 11th and the 21st of August 1925.


After annual manoeuvers near Hawaii and accompanied by eight movie and still photographers aboard the flag ship Seattle, Admiral Robert E. Coontz, Commander in Chief of the United States Navy, led a battle fleet of more than 50 warships and 23,000 men on a cruise via Samoa to Australia and New Zealand. The battleship West Virginia acted as the radio control vessel for the tour and several broadcasts directed to Australasia were relayed to listeners by local stations.

Departing from Melbourne on the 30th of July, the battleships accompanied by divisions of cruisers from the Scouting Fleet and squadrons of destroyers headed for New Zealand, where four sections of the fleet entered the harbours of Auckland, Wellington, Lyttelton and Port Chalmers simultaneously. The officers and men were extensively entertained in our cities and the visit did much to further cement the friendly feeling existing between the United States and New Zealand.


Last of the flush deck, four funnelled Destroyers, the 88 Clemson class vessels were built between 1919 and 1922. With a length of 96.4 metres, a maximum speed of 35 knots and a complement of 122, they were armed with four 4 inch (100 mm) guns and twelve torpedo tubes. The Robert Smith, Yarborough and Stoddert are known to have been among the fourteen to visit Lyttelton. Another fourteen would be sunk in the Second World War.


Also with four funnels, the eleven Omaha class light cruisers looked remarkably similar to the Clemson class destroyers. They were built between 1923 and 1925 to scout for battleships and featured a maximim speed of 35 knots for coöperation with the destroyers. Displacing 7,050 tons, they were 171 metres in length and armed with twelve 6 inch (152 mm) guns. Of this class, the U.S.S. Trenton (1923-1946) is seen moored at Lyttelton's No.3 Wharf in the second photograph.

Footnote

Inspired by this post is a comprehensively illustrated New Zealand Journal article about the US Navy's Pacific Fleet visit to Wellington in 1925 (which opens in a new tab or window).

Lyttelton: May, 1924

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As part of the 1923-4 world cruise of the Royal Navy's Special Service Squadron, the D Class Battle Cruisers Danae, Dragon and Dauntless visited Lyttelton from the 1st until the 8th of May 1924. With a combined complement of nearly 1,400 sailors, HMS Danae is moored opposite the inter-island ferry Wahine at the No.2 Wharf, with her sister ships at the No.3 Wharf.

The Garrick Hotel

Almost certainly named after the famed British actor David Garrick (1717-1779), John Fielder's Garrick Hotel was built on the northeast corner of Colombo and Kilmore Streets before 1862. By 1864 an extension along Kilmore Street doubled the size of the two storey wooden building (below).


At some time after 1883, but probably before 1890, the original structure was replaced with a brick built hotel and by 1928 the name had been changed to the Waverley Private Hotel (below).


Diagonally opposite the Christchurch Town Hall and shorn of its ornamentation and cornice, the sadly nondescript building is now barely noticed by the casual passer by (below).

1864 & 1928

A pair of elevated north-easterly views across Victoria Square from the Armagh Street tower of the Canterbury Provincial Council buildings.

In the foreground of the earlier image are the Provincial Council's workshops and stables, which were replaced by the extant Magistrate's Court buildings from 1869 to 1881.

Credits

1864 photograph: Anthony Rackstraw (Early Canterbury Photographers).

1928 photograph: Alexander Turnbull Library (Ref. No. PAColl-5800-04).

Curator's Choice

This month's Curator's choices from the Canterbury Heritage collection are vintage luggage labels from Christchurch's most prominent hotels in the first half of last century.

The Port Lytteltons

Two passenger carrying refrigerated cargo vessels have carried the name of the Port to which they were both regular vsitors.

The first Port Lyttelton was built at Belfast in 1902 as the twin screw Niwaru. With a length of 135 metres and a beam of 17 metres, she was delivered to the Tyser Line in March of that year.

At a service speed of 12 knots, she regularly carried frozen meat from New Zealand to Britain, but her 22 year career was not uneventful. On her second voyage, the 6,444 ton cargo liner, took on water in a heavy sea and charcoal from the insulation of the refrigerating chambers clogged her bilge pumps. 26,000 carcases had to be jettisoned overboard.


In August of 1903 the Niwaru was holed when she grounded off Napier. A mat covering the hole was carried away and the net inflow increased to twelve inches per hour, but the vessel managed to return to Napier under her own steam.

But her place in history was assured when she departed from Wellington on the 29th January 1903 with Katherine Mansfield as a passenger. The entire passenger accommodation was occupied by nine members of the Beauchamp family. Niwaru sailed via Cape Horn and the Canary Islands, where a photograph was taken of the family with the ship’s officers.

In verses that she wrote during the voyage, Mansfield mentioned a Tiger cub, which the Chief Officer kept in the No. 2 hold during the day and exercised on deck at night, to the alarm of the women passengers. But of that incident apparently little memory remained nearly twenty years after, when she wrote to her father: “... I still I have a very soft corner in my heart for the Niwaru. Do you remember how Mother used to enjoy the triangular shaped pieces of toast for tea? Awfully good they were, too, on a cold afternoon in the vicinity of the Horn. How I should love to make a long sea voyage again one of these days! But I always connect such experiences with a vision of Mother in her little Sealskin jacket with the collar turned up. I can see her as I write.”

Most of the family returned to Wellington, but for the next three years Katherine remained in London as a pupil at the Queen’s College in Harley Street.

In 1914 Niwaru's owners were instrumental in bringing about the formation of the Commonwealth & Dominion Line, later to become the Port Line, contributing eight ships and their houseflag, which never changed. Although not a huge fleet, Tyser and Company's ships were considered to be the finest on the Australasian run and set the standard for the first thirteen ships built by the new Commonwealth & Dominion Line.


Renamed Port Lyttelton in April 1916, the vessel was subsequently seconded by the Royal Navy and converted to a troop ship as His Majesty's Auxillary Transport Port Lyttelton.

Returned to her owners in 1919, her career ended on the 23rd January 1924, when she ran on to the rocks at Beauty Point near the entrance to Tasmania's Tamar River. Salvaged the following month, the Port Lyttelton was sold for scrap at the time when there was a worldwide surplus of tonnage. She arrived in Italy in September where the ship was broken up.

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By comparison the second Port Lyttelton enjoyed a somewhat less eventful 25 year career. Her greatest claim upon posterity appears to have been her role in New Zealand's waterfront strike of 1951. Local Wharfies (Stevedores) were charged with conspiracy relating to the loading of the vessel at Wellington in that year.


Launched at Newcastle in 1947 by R & W Hawthorn, Leslie & Company, the 10,780 ton ship was only slightly larger than her ill fated predecessor at a length 148.47 metres and a beam of 18.95 metres.


The emergence of container shipping sealed her fate and she was sold to Shipbreakers in 1972. The second Port Lyttelton was broken up the following year at Faslane in Scotland.