Untitled

New Zealand Herald, Volume I, Issue 118, 30 March 1864, Page 3

handed over to newspaper editors to enforce ? If the Chamber of Coinmc-ree is utterly helpless, can our merchants, Bhi))pera, traders, and dealers do nothing to stir the Governments—whether General or Provincial —into something like energy and action in the matter of harbour extension and accommodation r The question lias long been one of vital consequence; it. lias now become one of intolerable oppressiveness. Why it should longer be permitted to remain so is to us altogether unintelligible. Vor the last live or six years, little or no improvement has been made upon the Queenstreet Wharf which, on the contrary, has been suffered to fall into gradual decay. With tiie arbitrary and injurious suppression of the Harbour Committee, harbour affairs I tell into almost utter neglect. The longitude of the wharf was cut short, with Procrustian penury, at the very point where an j additional hundred feet in extent, with a cross T of four hundred feet in breadth would have furnished not only secure berthage for two ships of the largest tonnage, but would have enabled them to lie afloat at all times of the tide. Hut even this pitiful additional accommodation is still withheld; and the long promised Custom's T and shed continues in aheya-ieo .' i. With such natural facilities as those with which Auckland is gifted. Willi such ininvaluable and oasilv convertible frontages as those wherewith the Auckland Provincial Government is endowed, it is deplorable that the Government will neither furnish harbour accommodation themselves, nor lease their endowments to Wharfinger Companies that would only be too glad to turn those Government: endowments to private advantage and to public account. Why the Government should hesitate to act for themselvesordecline to empower Companies to act for them, is totally irreconcilable with every principle of public spirit and justice. They have leased the tolls of the Queen-street wharf. Why. then, not lease the harbour frontages to companies who will readily be found, upon just terms, to construct wharves and roadwavs from Custom House street (at its junction with the break-no -k a-id perilous ladder leading uy to Fori 11-• on,art) to Mevh.ir.ii-H' Bay r y Auckland, as ye:., :.b but tv;.i or tire-? degrees retrieved fro'ci a. diifo, dßACiouo, i'-sn. (generally) q\i:et roadstead. Hi:t our roorolianto ;uiit rearir.ora desire to s.-'O the port transformed into » harbour witn Cocks. wharves, basins, slips, and all the requisite and immediate accessories of a great seaport town. At presenr. Auckland is the verv reverse of all this. Steam and sailing ships are daily pouting in. Stock ships are without other means of discharge than, from the stream, by lighters. Steamers have to pick up a coveted berth whenever a longwished for berth becomes vacant. And sailing ships hang on sometimes at single anchor, sometimes at their moorings, consuming weeks in their discharge, where, under anything like harbour provision. days should sullice. flvery harbour arrangement is defective—defective—worse than defective! We have mi lights or light-houses. We have but two pilots, for the last do/.en years. Our buoys, according to shipmasters, are 100 small lo'bo seen. ii'i —thai is, the editors and reporters of the Press—are continual! v bearded and taken in task, as il these acts of omission were ours. \\ e are sensitively alive to the justice of the accusation; and as neither e.mimercial men nor men of the Chamber of Commerce appealdisposed to do their duty —why — We'll km. ii stiiilinpr shall lx- tau-lit to .-pcalc Xotliing l>ut " Harbour Works."