HARBOR IMPROVEMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 6259, 7 April 1883, Page 2

HARBOR IMPROVEMENT.

TO THE EDITOB.

Sib,— Your correspondent “ Aliqula” must surely have been misled by the paragraph in your report of the meeting at Port Chalmers, that I had said “If the north channel were filled up as I had proposed, there would be forty millions more tons of water in the south one than at present in both,” when he makes the very direct statement that my “hydraulics are wrong,” and supports that modest assertion by saying that “ not a drop more water would flow up the harbor, although the bar were removed;” which any schoolboy could have told him. Your reporter having been placed by the conductors of the meeting behind the plans that I explained, was at such a disadvantage that I wonder how he could have compiled as good a report as he did, I had not the least expectation or intention of doing anything more than explain the plans, and certainly expected that those whose interests were so largely at stake would have provided means for their being so placed that I could have done so. No one can be more unfitted, indeed physically incapable, than I am of lecturing orgmaking public speeches ; but sensible as I am of my extreme awkwardness and annoyance on that particular evening, I believe that anyone who was in front of the larjer plan, and attended with the intention of understanding—l had not been in the hall many minutes when I saw that a very large proportion of my audience came with a very different purpose —comprehended that it was by removing some of the sandspit opposite Harrington Point, which at present forms a gauge for the whole harbor, that I proposed to admit the extra water to the Upper Harbor, Your correspondent is doubtless aware that I have made various offers to the Board for removing the bar. My last plan embraced also the widening and straightening of the whole channel to nearly opposite the Maori Kaik, thereby securing the removal of the inner bar, which has made up considerably since my first offer went in to the Board, many months ago Had Nature been properly assisted then, we should have had 23ft at lowest water long ere now, instead of having a vessel drawing 20ft (Rn bumping and dragging through the sandspit at high tide. Will the New Zealand Shipping Company send down the Fenstanton on Tuesday f and if they do, shall we be able to admit her ? Will she be able to go out when she is loaded ? Shall we take a back seat as a port altogether, or can one supreme effort be made, and the hatchet be buried f If there is energetic and harmonious action on the part of the powers that be, and the quickest, safest, and most economical plan that has yet been devised be at once put in hand, by the end of June it would be perfectly safe for either of the Company’s steamers to come over the bar at any time of the tide. It is, perhaps, too much to expect those who are In power to sacrifice their petty personal fancies and prejudices, and to unite for the common good to save our port from sure, if slow, decay, while other ports are going ahead. The last new scheme for freezing meat at half the present cost, the advancing price of meat, and bad harvest at Home should surely make us see that there is plenty of need for us to have large vessels coming in and going out here every week ; but the bar is indeed a bar to our progress In every way.—l am, etc., R, J, Fkemor Willson, Dunedin, April 7.