Godley Heads defences

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33733, 4 January 1975, Page 10

Godley Heads defences

(The second pf two articles by

GORDON OGILVIE)

Godley Head, at the entrance to Lyttelton Harbour, is a natural position for defence of the harbour’s approaches, and it was heavily fortified during the Second World War. The only harbour defences at the start of the war were two veteran fourinch pieces at Battery Point which had come from the secondary armament of H.M.S. New Zealand, scrapped in 1922. New weapons ordered for the defence of Lyttelton had been aboard a ship sunk early in the war. Army Headquarters therefore sent two 60pounder field guns and their crews from Wellington and posted them on Godley Head to cover the harbour entrance. Soon afterwards two six-inch Mark 7 guns were placed on the cape above Boulder Bay, A year later tw'O new six-inch coastal artillery pieces (Mark 24) were sited in concrete emplacements above the Godley Head cliffs and the 11th Coastal Regiment R.N.Z.A.

was formed to man them. Under Lieutenant-Colonel J. F. Cracroft Wilson, at that stage in command of all South Island coastal artillery, the lighthouse was moved to a lower position to clear the field of fire and radar was installed which could scan half-way to Wellington. The Battery Point guns were involved in an unhappy episode early in the war when on October 12, 1939, the Lyttelton fishing launch Dolphin was sunk by a warning shot and one of the two men aboard, James Brassell, was killed. Thereafter a rifle was used to fire warning shots. The nearest the Godley Head guns came to seeing any action was on the night of June 24-25, 1941. Just after midnight on that date the German minelayer Adjutant laid 10 mines close in across the approaches to Lyttelton Harbour. The Adjutant, ready to scuttle herself if the strategy went amiss, laid these mines at a depth of 16 to 22 metres, the nearest ones within two miles of Godley Head. She took her bearings off the Godley Head light and noted also in her log the presence of

a searchlight directed towards Adderley Head and some homing beacons. Barely 24 hours later the Adjutant laid another 10 mines off Wellington Harbour.

The coastal defence system missed its cue and nothing was known of these minelaying activities until four years later when they were revealed in captured German documents. There is no record of any suspicious vessel being seen near either port at the time. A possible excuse for this is that the Adjutant closely resembled one of the New Zealand minesweepers working the area.

After the war the 11th Coast Regiment continued in business, training C.M.T. men and Territorials and was not disbanded until 1958. With its huge panoramic views and exhilarating air, Godley Head was an idyllic site for compulsory military service; and very few who “did time” there, including the writer, could have had any regrets about it.

Only a huddle of military huts now remains on the headland to recall the days when the boom of heavy artillery used regularly to reassure the populations of Lyttelton and Christchurch that the

“Coasties” were on the alert.

The military reserve has since 1963 been the property of the Marine Division of the Ministry of Transport who lease the major portion to an Opawa farmer. Some of the buildings are used by a Toe H youth group, and two lighthouse keepers and their families are also housed on the headland.

It is envisaged that the Lyttelton Harbour Board will ultimately take over the land and that the Godley light will “go automatic”, thus ending well over a century of human surveillance.