THE PORT OF LYTTELTON.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 77, 7 May 1914, Page 6

THE PORT OF LYTTELTON.

OUTLET FOR THE TRADE OF CANTERBURY. The first impression of Lyttclton received by the traveller who is hurried through from boat to"* train, or from train to boat, is that of a tangle of crossing railway lines, trucks, engines, and a row of wharves and ships pointing out into a harbour locked within stern hills. There is also a vaguely remembered impression of houses ranged on the hillsides, but by the time he has collected his bundles and been hurried from boat

to train, or train to boat, and been swallowed up in the roaring blackness of the tunnel, or in the crowded alleyways of the ferry, his impressions are a very hazy confusion. But Lyttelton is more than a mere junction between ship and train—it is the port, and a centre of the greatest importance , to North Canterbury. In the Beginning. It is older than Canterbury —older, that is, than the beginning made by those pilgrims of the First Four Ships. Lyttelton was Lyttelton before Christchurch existed, and Lyttelton is full of oldest inhabitants who remember the days when the sailing ships came into port with the sound of chanteys, when the whalers came in, and, the traders sailed up and down the coast. When

the first ships bearing the Canterbury pilgrims arrived Lyttelton was a town containing some thirty houses, and the

road to the plains was an arduous bridle

track running over the hills to the Heatheote Valley. Lyttelton Avas surveyed anil laid out by Captain Thomas, in preparation for the work of the Canterbury Association, and a landing jetty and four large immigration barracks were part of the preparations for the settlers who were to arrive. The settlers were quirk in "getting to work when they did !aml, and the township's prosperity rapidly rose. In the year following the arrival of those sacrosanct first four ships nineteen other vessels arrived from .England, bri lining

3000 more people to swell the population of Canterbury, and for many years Lyttelton stood as the first town in the .province. That was in the days "before the fire, "as the oldest inhabitants date events, and though the fire, which occurred on October 24, 1870, destroyed half the town, the tunnel, which had been completed in 1867, had already commenced a huge increase in prosperity, which easily compensated for the loss, as far as the general well-being of the was concerned, anyway. Before Christchurch. The present Mayor, Mr J. R. Webb, is one who remembers the first beginnings of Lyttelton, having arrived in the port in 1859, a boy of 14, and in his reminiscences Christchurch is remembered as a marshy flat, in the rhyme of one disappointed immigrant, as the place [ ''Where the men with brains of fog Built a city in a bog." But he has lived through the times when the settlers had either to cart their goods over the zigzag, or take them by lighter up the Heathcote River, and he has seen the optimists triumph over the pessimists in seeing the city in the bog become a city indeed, and Lyttelton" grew from a collection of wooden shacks to a bustling port. Others there* are who remember when Grubb Slip stood where the gasworks are now, and vessels were hauled up for overhaul by windlass where now there is dry land. Old Wharves. The water lapped the beach where the fijie Post OfEee now stands. The "screw pile" wharf, a great innovation in its day, lay where No. 2 jetty now receives big steamers, No. 7 jetty was. once Peacoeke's Wharf. "Tent Town" was pitched where Oxford Street now runs,water had to be brought from over the hills and through .the tunnel, and paid by Che masters of ships and by the townsmen, and the crime of water stealing was a common one in those days. All these things and

many more are remembered by, the old-

est inhabitants, but it would be hard to realise that these things were within the lifetime of a man were it not that in some of the old buildings, nestling amongst modernity, are visible reminders of the old times. Ancient and Modern. But there is an atmosphere of the ways of a departed generation ;:bout, the town of Lyttelton, despite itsbastle, even though the old places are gradually being replaced by modern and handsome luiildintrs of brick, and Lyttelton the

port is truly of this age, the town belongs to an older generation. Coming upon the town from the bay it lies picturesquely perched in a hollow of stern hills, houses ranged in terraces along the near slopes, the business portion of the town running up from the level land and stopping under the 1 shadow of severe crags. The surroundings of the town emphasise its atmosphere of utilitarianism —at first sight Lyttelton impresses the observer with the idea that its purpose is business. The passenger boats aiid the freighted steamers draw up to the long wharves day after day,

discharging their freights of humanity and merchandise, to * receive other freights in turn to distribute over the world. The shunting engines with their trains of trucks manoeuvre and twist amongst an. intricacy of lines and crossings, carrying the produce of the plains to the ships' sides, or bringing the manufactures of the world from the ships to the city, and all day long the tunnel is debouching trains laden with the products that make the prosperity of Canterbury. The Flavour of the Forties.

Lyttelton is a composite of two towns, of two ages. The harrying trains, the great steamships, the iron ways, rattling cranes and black wharves are of to-day — the sternly businesslike and machinemade present, but one has only to j wander round its terraces along its side streets to find the flavour of the "for-j ties." Not that the borough is not i modern .in its conveniences—the Borcugli Councils have looked after that, as will j be shown later, but the town looks time- j worn, in this new country where: ancient history is- not so very old, Lyttelton appears older than it really is; but age is, after all, only a comparative term, and the most of Lyttelton's bouses and buildings are really old in, comparison with ( those mushroom growths, the steamships' at the wharves down below. Lyttelton remembers times before steamships, the days before haste became an obsession of humanity, and everywhere -in the old houses, or in the old hostels, one may find old inhabitants with fragmentary disconnected tales of the "old days," when the barques and the full-rigged ships plied to this port and Captain Bull}' Hayes occasionally dropped in from the equatorial islands with trade.

The First; Steamers. Lyttelton's old-fashioned dwellings

still predominate over the new, built in a style sometimes reminiscent of England and more often showing new characteristics born of necessity which have since become features of our domestic architecture. Besides the old-fashioned wooden house, iyy-clad, one may sec an equally old-fashioned stone building built as though intended for eterftity; but everywhere now the new is jostling the old, and is getting room, as it must, and tlioie who build say that there is no speculation in building, for every new house , is let Wore it is finished.

It is many years since Lyttelton boasted of berthage for '' ocean-going ships of 1000 and 1200 tons," as the chairman of the first Harbour Board said proudly in 1876—it can boast better accommodation than that now, and the first ocean steamship that pjied for the New Zealand Shipping Company in those years, from England to Lyttelton, people would hardly trust themselves in now—those marvellous first steamers, the Stadt Harlem/ the British Queen, and the British King. And Lyttelton has progressed ,in importance with the progress of the province it feeds, progressed in activity and busyness even though Christchurch has absorbed the increase of population that is Lyttelton's by right, but port and city are one and indivisable, and the development of Christchurch is the work of Lyttelton. A Busy Port. • , And in these yeg.rs it is a busy port, as the port of so, large 'and fertile a province should, be; yet it : could be busier still if it were not that its facilities for the handling of' trafiie were so hanjpered—at present the traffic is congested. It is no fault of the Harbour Board's, this congestion, for that fcody has done its work faithfully and well in providing' conveniences for ships and shippers, in doing all possible to make for the efficient handling of trade, the-fault lies with tjie -

Department, or with the powers that hold the strings of the /Department's purse. The Lyttelton railway station and the railway goods stores and offices | are indicative of neglect. In part these buildings are amongst the oldest in Lyttelton, and if other ports are not so old they do not look less dilapidated. Yet the Lyttelton railway handles a vast quantity of produce and a large number of passengers every day, and if only for the sake *of efficiency it ?should be provided with decent offices and goods stores. - ( A Delayed Promise. Since 1912 the promise of better conditions has been in the air——in that year plans were prepared for an entire reconstruction, of the station buildings and the lines, According to these plans the present buildings were to be enj tirely removed, and new and enlarged accommodation built ■ along Norwich Quay, extending from Oxford Street to. a spot just below where the Casualty Ward stands. These plans provide for a station building occupying an. area of about 100 ft by 20ft, and a platform 20ft wide and 14 chains in length. On the higher level there was to be a passenger entrance, Bft wide, leading- into Norwich Quay, and a vehicle entrance 2Oft wide on the lower level; The estimated' cost of these' improvements is estimate, but though they cost half as much again they are very . necessary, and should be carried out, not for the benefit of Lyttelton merely, but for the benefit of' all that district for which Lyttelton is the port, and. for the benefit of all those shippers who use the port. Congested Traffic. There is still another matter, very stale to most people now, and, through long delays and many evasions which have killed optimism, almost a hopeless scheme to many, and that is the duplication and electrification of Lyttelton tunnel. Because of its costliness the proposal to supplant the tunnel with a canal is a scheme not to be considered. But the need for better, quicker railway transit between Christchurch and Lyttelton is imperative and urgent. It is a necessity of trade, and trade necessities must. be met. It is not going to cost a great deal to electrify the tunnel when once the power from Lake Coleridge is supplied, but it will cost some hundred thousands to duplicate the tunnel—but that cost is going to be returned to the people with the benefits of quicker, more efficient transport. Because of the congestion of traffic through • the, tunnel strings of • laden trucks are now held up, either at the wharves or in the yards at Christchurch almost every day, and the consequent delay and the shortage of trucks caused through so many of them having to lie idle, though stacked with goods, means loss to the consignees and to the Railway Department, for assuredly the Department would gain if a more jfficient service enabled it to handle traffic more expeditiously. When the shrewd minds of those-who planned the Canterbury settlement demised a canal and set aside a stretch of land from the port to Christchurch as the route of the future canal, railways were in their infancy, and canals were not. The idea of tunnelling a mile and a-quarter beneath the hills was a stupendous project, so stupendous that it. was never thought of—the digging of a canal was a much more feasible project. Since then the railway has 'arrived," and, as a practical project the canal scheme is dead. But the duplication of the tunnel is still a very live matter, ev,en though delays have disheartened many of its advocates,-and nothing is going to help Lyttelton to thrive, and Christchurch too, in cohse--quence, as the effective service a double tunnel would provide.