The Dominion TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1926. AIDS TO NAVIGATION

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 14, 12 October 1926, Page 10

The Dominion TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1926. AIDS TO NAVIGATION

Having regard to the volume and importance of its shipping traffic, it has been said of the sea-board of New Zealand that it is one of the worst lighted in the world. For long stretches the coasts of the Dominion bristle with menaces to ships, which are inadequately marked either by lights or other aids to navigation. The long immunity from serious disaster to ships involving loss of life, on the New Zealand coast is a testimony to the care and caution exercised by shipmasters rather than to the aids to navigation provided for the ever increasing volume of shipping which every year includes vessels of greater size and higher speed. Yet every now and then comes the loss of some ship to remind ns of the insecurity of coastal navigation.

Ships which pay adequate rates in the form of light dues are entitled in these days to the best coastal aids than can be provided. The present policy of the Marine Department in regard to -this important question is a progressive one; but much requires to be done to make up the leeway caused by failure in the past to keep abreast of modern practice. According,to figures in the last report of the Department the receipts for light ’ dues in 1925-26 were £78.709 and the expenditure, on lighthouses was £26,038. The vote for lighthouses, etc., for 1925-26 was £10,450; but the amount expended was only £5690.

This year’s lighthouse vote is £13.000. and. it is. interesting to note, over*half of this sum is allocated to navigation aids to shipping trading in and out of the port of Wellington. The sea route between Wellington and Lyttelton is one of the most important “main highways” of the Dominion, and much of it is traversed at night. The express ferry steamers travelling on this route at nearly 20 miles an hour and maintaining a railway time-table, in nearly' all weathers, carry between 150,000 and 180,000 passengers a year; yet between Pencarrow and Godley Heads there is only one “lamp-post'''—the lighthouse at Cape Campbell. It is now proposed to erect an automatic light on Kaikoura Peninsula, roughly half-way between Cape Campbell and Lyttelton, “so as to afford ships an intermediate opportunity to fix their positions.” Other important improvements will be the diaphone fogsignals to be erected at Pencarrow and Godley Heads, for which the sum of £4OOO has been voted. The apparatus is due to arrive shortly, and when in position these fog-signals will vastly improve the navigation aids to ships entering Wellington and Lyttelton. The importance of wireless at sea is too well appreciated to need discussion here, but it is pleasing to note that in. this respect th<s Marine Department is moving with the times. Extensive experiments have been made with radio direction-finding beacons, and one has been installed at Cape Maria Van Diemen. Not many ships in the New Zealand trade are fitted with radio direction-finders, but it is to be hoped that the Department will push ahead with the installation of- the proposed radio beacons for Wellington and Lyttelton, for which £3OOO has been voted. When these are ready it will be found that'all the important ships will be equipped to make use of them.