VALUABLE LEASEHOLD LAND ON NAVAL POINT RECLAMATION

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28979, 21 August 1959, Page 24

VALUABLE LEASEHOLD LAND ON NAVAL POINT RECLAMATION

From 30 acres of leased land on the Naval Point reclamation of about 71 acres, the Lyttelton Harbour Board is now receiving an annual rent of nearly £10,600. The return appears rich, yet in 1926, when the raclamation was finished, the board, after considering reports from its engineer, considered that future reclamation of the same nature in Lyttelton would be too expensive.

Since then all dredging spoil has been dumped for washing to sea.

When the inner harbour was first built, the Naval Point breakwater on the western side was 1400 feet long but it is now almost entirely incorporated with the Naval Point reclamation area abutting its southern face. The board’s first roclamation work was from the boat jetties to Gladstone pier and when the work started on the western side sandy beaches at Dampier’s Bay (where the Banks Peninsula Cruising Club’s rooms are now situated), Sandy Bay (near the graving dock), and that near the tunnel mouth disappear

Early in 1909 the board decided to reclaim an area of about 70 acres outside the western breakwater, from the eastern end of the mole to Erskine Point. Tipping of stone was begun before statutory authority was given to reclaim.

Because of the soft bottom of the harbour—present-day engineers know all about that problem —more or less serious subsidences of the wall were exasperatingly frequent but by the end of 1915 the walls were closed and were gradually brought up to their proper level. From 1912 to 1925, spoil dredged by the Canterbury was pumped' into the area behind the wall.!

About 12,000,000 tons were pumped but, naturally, a quantity escaped in the form of “slurry” in the early stages of the work. The average width of the reclaimed land behind the walls was 13 chains.

The retaining walls are in water from 13 to 17 feet deep, are 3400 feet long, and cost £66,000. A use proposed of the reclamation was for residential purposes. Besides the oil tanks, the borough recreation ground, the storage yards of the Harbour ■ Board, and the clubhouse of the Canterbury Yacht and Motor-Boat I Club, ■ The first leases of reclaimed ■land to the west were given in 1 1926 to the Vacuum Oil Company land the British Imperial Oil Company for the bulk storage of fuel and other oils. Railway sidings were laid to the sites and the tanks constructed. The first oil tanker to visit Lyttelton was the chartered Lincoln Ellworth. which berthed on October 18, 1927. Tankers have a special berth alongside the Naval Point breakwater from where fuel is pumped and at which ships may bunker.

The oil trade is valuable to the port. For the year ended September 30, 1958, 147,892 tons of motor spirits and kerosene were landed, plus 82.316 tons of oil. The outward shipments were nearly ,28,000 tons.