Launch cascade owned by George Andrews

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32524, 6 February 1971, Page 11

Launch cascade owned by George Andrews

Mr J. R. Clayton of Ferrymead Terrace supplies interesting details of the launch Cascade (photograph 6A) together with a set of snapshots of the 60-foot, Port Chalmers-built boat. She was named after the Cascade River in South Westland where she was initially engaged in an unremunerative flax trade before being. laid up in Paterson’s Inlet, Stewart Island. It was from there that Mr George Andrews, of Sanders Cup fame, bought her with a view to trading round Banks Peninsula. When he went south for her he invited young Clayton to accompany him. Reluctantly the invitation was declined as Clayton was in the Christchurch Boys’ High School Ist XV and the School-College match was imminent. (Mr Clayton does not mention, but the school magazine records, that "Clayton, who played a dashing game throughout, rushed up and scored between the posts.”) As this helped his team to win by 22 points to 13 it probably compensated for the missed trip, especially since he was able to help bring the boat over the Sumner bar. Experienced as he was, George Andrews had not been allowed a clearance from Bluff Harbour until he shipped an old beachcomber who had a master’s ticket: he had to have a qualified skipper. This one was completely useless and always drunk. Andrews took command after he had put the Cascade on a mud bank off the Nuggets and hit the breakwater at Oamaru. The Cascade was originally twin-screwed, with two four-cylinder engines. Her new owner removed one engine, converted her to single screw and used her to take fishing parties round to Pigeon Bay. Finally she was bought by the Jensen brothers and fished her

days at the Taieri mouth, where she had carried passengers on the river. Redcliffs Mrs D. A. Wilson, of Papanui Road, writes of photograph 5B: “Jack Smith was a boatbuilder in the large building in the centre of the bay. I assume he also hired out boats. The hill road was called Cave Terrace. From right to left, the first house was built as a holiday house for Nurse Maude. As a .girl I carried milk up for her. The second and third houses were occupied by Messrs H. W. Harris and S. Betteley, respectively. My father, the late F. H. Cotton, had built the first house on the hill, half-way up Moncks Spur, in 1910. I lived there with him from 1910 to 1931. Jack Smith commenced a house at the first bend in the hill road before 1910, building it himself, but he did not complete it for several years.”

Mr L. R. de Roo, Merivale Lane, recalls visiting, in the first decade of the century, a house on the Redcliffs hill owned by a Mr Wright who published the “Sydenham paper.” (This was “The Spectator," 1898-1828.) This was supposed to have been the first house on the hill. Mr Owen E. Wright, Manchester Street, says that his grandfather, Ernest Ephraim Wright, was supposed to have built the first house in Redcliffs while the second was built by or for Nurse but this was below the Wrights which, according to an uncle, still stands and is now painted green. Mr E. J. Ebert, of Bay View Road, says that the first real house to be built there was the one on the extreme right of the photograph and was built by or for Nurse Maude. It is still there and is occupied by Dr Dorothy Simpson. The second house built, out of view, is No. 5 Cave Terrace, *bove the

elbow in the road, and was occupied by Mr Jack Smith who built and hired boats and also had a launch, the Kea with which he used to run sixpenny trips from the now defunct Sumner pier. The jetty, says Mr Ebert, is not Bums’s which was only 200 yards from Shag Rock, but the Christchurch Yacht Club’s jetty. Mr G. O. Dowling and Mr Walton H. Beanland of Edgeware Road make the same correction. But can anyone supply the dates at which Burns’s jetty was built and demolished? Mr Dowling adds that the second house from the comer was built by a Mr John Swift who had lived for many years in Japan, hence tire unusual design as can be seen today. Iron barn In photograph 48, a view from the Cathedral looking east, two buildings are visible between Trinity Congregational Church and the tram sheds and stables in Worcester Street. I have now discovered that the nearer and smaller one was occupied by the Ray Bicycle Company while the larger was an engineering plant run by a Mr Burns. Troop on bridge Mrs G. F. Hutton, Darfield, dates the photograph (6A) of troops riding “cross the Ferry Bridge as September 21, 1914. These were the Mounted Rifles, comprising B squadron (the C.Y.C.) on the bridge, the 10th (Nelson) which her husband commanded and the Bth (South Canterbury) squadrons. The mounteds were on their way to Lyttelton to embark in the Athenic. Mr M. Hullett says he has cause to remember that the control box was still in position in 1920 when his cycle slid on the iced surface of the bridge. ,j