WESTPORT
the vicinity of Packers’ Point, and anchored in the South Spit Lagoon.
The first steamer to enter this, or any other West Coast river, was the P.S. Tasmanian Maid of 96 tons, on 29th January, 1862. She brought sixty diggers who “increased the population of the district to about 200.” She landed her cargo in the scrub about where Gladstone Street was afterwards located. It may here be mentioned that the first steam vessel to enter New Zealand waters was H.M.S. Driver in 1846.
The port of Westport was declared, by notice in Nelson Gazette, 26th November, 1866, to be “all such portion of the river Buller and its banks, as is comprised within an area which shall include one mile of the river from its mouth, and a space on each bank respectively of not less than forty chains in width.” It was also declared (Nelson Gazette, No. 29, Volume 14) that “the river frontage from Gladstone Street to Wallaby Street was the legal landing-place for the lading and unlading of goods.”
The Flagstaff and Signal-station were erected 17th November, 1866, and Henry Jacobsen was appointed signalman on 22nd of the same month.
The port early gathered trade; the duty collected at the Customs House during the week ending 14th September, 1867, was over one thousand pounds. Naturally the goldfields offered temptation to ships’ crews, and many deserted. Captures of these by the police kept the gaol full and, incidentally, provided much of the labour required for road-making. One example of this trouble is afforded by an announcement in the Westport Times of 10th February, 1868: “The brig Susan, owing to her crew being in gaol, was not ready for sea yesterday.”
In the Public Works Statement of 1885 the Minister announced that the harbour works at Westport had been placed in the hands of a Board which was taking steps to open up quarries at Cape Foulwind by a railway. By March, 1886, two quarries near the lighthouse had been opened out, and a railway constructed to the southern or main breakwater at Buller. In 1914 an extension of the railway-line was made
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