OLD LAND MARK REMOVED

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21116, 17 March 1934, Page 12

OLD LAND MARK REMOVED

CANNON AT ERSKINE POINT The big muzzle-loading cannon which, in its emplacement at Erskine Point at the entrance to the Lyttelton Domain, has been a picturesque land mark for picnickers going to Corsair Bay for more than 40 years, has been displaced from its mountings and the barrel thrown over the cliff on to the rocks below. Recently the gun was given to a Lvttelton engineering firm for removal. Workmen this week stripped and broke up the more valuable metal of the mounting, and removed the oil, about 12 gallons, from the recoil mechanism. The barrel was too big and cumoersonic to be of any use, so it was thrown on to the parapet and then allowed to fall over the cliff. The gun was placed in position in the early 'nineties, some years after the three guns were mounted below the Sumner road. The object of having the gun at Erskine Point was to provide a reserve defence should a hostile vessel succeed in getting past the guns on the Sumner road and those of Fort Jervois. From its position it covered the entrance to the inner harbour at an almost pointblank range. Originally the gun was in an emplacement in the Wellington Botanic Gardens. Built at Woolwich, the sun was what is known as a seven-inch, seven ton R.'M.L. (rifled, muzzle loading gun. It was capable of firing a variety of projectiles, from common shell, shrapnel. Palliser shot, and case-shot, each weighing from 112 to 1141b. to the bis double-shell, weighing 1451b. A full charge consisted of 301b of pebble powder. The use of shrapnel in other than field suns is unusual in these days, but in the old days it was used from fixed guns for firing at men on the decks of hosUle vessels. The Erskine Point gun never fired but blank shot while at Lyttelton. "A lull charge, if is stated, would have shattered every window within half a mile, f- had the honoui. however, of firing a Royal Salute on ihe occasion of the arrival at Lyttelton of the Ophir, conveying the present King and Queen, then the Duke and Duchess of York. The salute was fired by all the guns in Lyttelton harbour; first the three guns on the Sumner road, then the Erskine Point gun. end then the six guns at Fort Jervois. each in (urn until the number was completed. The .firing was controlled by telephone from a central fire-con-