EDITORIAL COMMENT. New Zealand Harbours.

Progress, Volume V, Issue 5, 1 March 1910, Page 151

EDITORIAL COMMENT. New Zealand Harbours.

The more one reads nowadays of the magnificent engineering feats in devising machinery for dredging and reclamation works the more one is impressed with the possibilities yet in store for New Zealand ports. The latest instance is supplied by the great clay dredgers in use at the Port of Bombay, described and illustrated in another column. That strongly suggests for the serious consideration of our Government the advisability of importing a couple of these wonderful clay-cutting dredgers to improve the harbours of this Dominion. Both the East and the West Coast would benefit in no small degree, and it must be admitted that no place in either of the islands could keep one of these mammoth excavators going for any length of time. There is no district that would benefit more than Hawke's Bay, for the land of this province is perhaps unequalled. In spite of harbour drawbacks, the district has forged ahead, and is still without a harbour, though nearly a million sterling has been sunk in attempting to build a breakwater exposed to the full weight of the Pacific Ocean. That the attempt has been partially successful goes without saying, but anyone knowing the locality must look at the possibilities of making Napier one of the finest ports in the Dominion by the agency of these wonderful dredgers. Recently Mr. George Nelson, m.i.m.e., c.c., devised a very likely looking scheme for reclaiming hundreds of acres of land and providing a harbour 400 acres in extent, with a minimum depth of 33 feet of water. The whole of the undertaking practically was to be accomplished by two of these powerful dredgers, but On account of so much money

having been sunk at the Breakwater, opinions are very divided, and the present Harbour Board is asking the ratepayers shortly to grant them the power to borrow a further £300,000 to extend the Breakwater. It would be difficult Lo point to any other place in the world that would stand such a thing. Situated, as the Napier Inner Harbour is, land-locked, protected from storms, a silt bottom (the deposit of rivers for hundreds of years), it seems like a fairy tale to read of these attempts at breakwater building, especially when there is the experience of Durban in Natal, and Boulogne in France to show what dredging can do. Neither of these ports were so favourably situated as the Napier Inner Harbour, and yet persistent efforts are being made to fight Nature The work being carried out at Bombay is another striking illustration of Hawke's Bay blindness. A careful estimate of the proposed work at Napier showed that land worth more than twice the cost of the undertaking would be reclaimed, a fact that ought not to be lost sight of. Napier is one of the striking illustrations of the need for nationalising the harbours. It is to be hoped that people will yet be educated to what is being done with success in other parts of the world, forsake the breakwater, which lias failed, and improve the harbour Nature made for Hawke's Bay Here it is well to understand that professional opinion is divided on the subject. All agree that the proposal to make the harbour at the far end of the lagoon is perfectly feasible. Where the experts differ is about the entrance into the port after it is constructed by the dredgers. The shipping folk declare with something like unanimity that the entrance, which must be dredged, will present insuperable difficulties to the navigator in anything like heavy weather. It will be a dredged canal of the depth necessary, for the biggest ships of course., and the width will be narrow. What will be the fate of a big ship trying to negotiate this canal in a gale of wind with a tremendous sea rolling in, such as can roll on this coast? What if the attempt is made when there is a heavy roll without wind, and that also is a tremendous thing on this part of the coast? The majority of the skippers declare that the conditions are impossible; in fact, that no master who respects his reputation would undertake to bring a big boat in under such conditions. Moreover, the conditions, they declare, would be always altering with every fresh gale or roll in of the surf. Furthermore still, they ask where the size of the big boats is to stop. A few years ago four thousand tons was thought likely

to be the limit, and our artificial harbours were prepared accordingly. Then the tonnage grew to six, and successively by leaps and bounds, until it reached the present 13,000 maximum. The same maximum, they add, is under the cloud of expectation, which shows vaguely up to 40,000. It is apparent that in the opinion of these shipmen these great boats of the future are destroying the new canal into the new harbour with their cutwaters. There is no doubt something in the contention. But the last word need not be considered to have been said for all that. Firstly, the sea is not always under storm conditions. Secondly, the design of the harbour may be made to contain provision for keeping up a scour to maintain the canal of entrance at the proper depth. Thirdly, protection for the canal is not a thing impossible to devise. The advantages of the proposed system, whose possibilities for the whole Dominion are opening out so splendidly, are incentives to thresh the matter out with a view not to waive aside this project, but to do aU things possible to make it a success in face of the worst conditions of sea and storm. Nothing can be worse than the present conditions under which nothing can enter the harbour protected (?) by the breakwater in bad weather, or lie there when once entered if the bad weather continues. Moreover, there is no visible guarantee that the three hundred thousand asked for noAV for r-on-tinuina 1 this fruitless fight with the ocean Avill help the struggle in any way. There is no guarantee, in other words, that the money will not be thrown, like portions at least of former loans, into the sea. There is a big stake here, and the issue ought to be settled in the best interests of the Dominion with the best consideration of all the sides there are to it.