This web site is designed to give information and driving directions to New Zealand's lighthouses. Most of the information was gathered during a three month trip to New Zealand from December 1999 to March 2000.
New Zealand relied on shipping in the early years for trade and immigration. Lighthouses were desperately needed as the hazardous coast claimed over 1,000 ships in the first 50 years of colonization. Three of those shipwrecks claimed the lives of over 450 people.
New Zealand's first lighthouse was erected on Pencarrow Head in 1858 at the entrance to Wellington Harbour. The first keeper was a woman named Mary Jane Bennett who also was the only woman keeper in the New Zealand Lighthouse Service.
The first towers were manufactured in England of cast iron and were shipped in sections to the site and assembled by bolting them together. By the 1880's the towers were able to be manufactured locally. Other towers were constructed of local hard wood but very few of these towers have lasted due to weather- induced decay.
The early lighthouses and their locations were decided by the Provincial Governments of the time. In 1862 the Marine Board of New Zealand was formed and the vessels paid monetary dues to support lighthouse construction. In 1866 the Board was changed to the Marine Department and they formed the Lighthouse Service within that department. The rules and regulations for the service was based on the Scottish Lighthouse Service. Some of the harbour lighthouses came under control of their local Harbour Boards and remain that way to this day.
Most of the lighthouses were built during the 1870/1880 period with over twenty being erected by the end of the century. The first lighthouses were designed by James Balfour, Marine Engineer. After he drowned in Timaru harbour in 1869, his replacement was John Blackett, who designed fourteen lighthouses in that capacity.
Initially the lights did not flash but this caused confusion with other lights in the area so flashing lights were introduced. These first lights burned colza oil then later paraffin oil. A constant job for the keepers was trimming the wick so the lights would burn bright and clear. The glass lanterns were imported from Scotland, England, and France. The lantern was rotated by a clockwise mechanism driven by weights that hung on a cable down the tower. The mechanisms had to be wound every hour to keep the lantern turning. Some lanterns floated on a bed of mercury while others used metal rollers.
In the 1900's incandescent kerosene burners replaced the oil lamps. The 1930's saw the beginning of lights converted to diesel-generated electricity or if possible mains electricity and by 1957, all the lights had been converted.
During the 1980's the last of the lighthouses were automated with the final one, The Brothers, in July 1990.
Mark Phillips
Very soon after he assumed office Captain Allman presided over the final act of a project which intermittently had engaged the attention of his predecessors for nearly 30 years. This was
the Snares Light about which nothing more had been done since Captain Johnson's visit with the Colonial delegates in 1891. In 1896, accomplanied by the new Marine Engineer W.H. Hales, Captain Allman again went south to reconsider the site for the proposed light.
It was an anticlimax. They confirmed the views of the 1891 delegates and in the following year, at a conference of Colonial Premiers in Hobart, New Zealand was invited to submit plans for the light. But once again, nothing was done. After years of debate and several expeditions to the island, time had wrought its own changes. Steam vessels no longer passed to the south of New Zealand as the windjammers had done in search of the favourable westerlies; the matter of the light on the Snares was quietly dropped, and the New Zealand Lighthouse Service was relieved of the prospect of constructing and manning what undoubtedly would have been the most isolated lighthouse in the world.
On rather firmer ground Captain Allman addressed himself to the matter of lights required in New Zealand. He placed a priority on lights at East Cape, and Kahurangi Point on the West Coast, but he also suggested that lights were needed at Cape Kidnappers, Kaikoura Peninsula, North Cape, Cape Brett and on Flat Point, 45 miles north-east of Palliser. These would be twentieth century lights but in the meantime, at the turn of the century, the Marine Department published a special coloured lighthouse chart of New Zealand. It was an impressive document showing a coastline now lighted with 28 principal lights and 17 harbour lights. It was a remarkable record of achievement and a silent testimony to Balfour and Blackett the engineers, to Johnson and Fairchild the Master Mariners and to David Scott the Artificer, a record of their life's work.
After their first and somewhat unsuccessful experiments with unattended lights at Cape Jackson and Tuahine, the Marine Department turned their attention to revolving lights. It was not a new concept. It has already been shown that the first light on Pencarrow had been designed as a revolving light, but owing to mechanical faults had appeared as a fixed light.
The first successful revolving light was at Dog Island and, like most of its kind, it was actuated by a clockwork mechanism controlled by a huge weight which descended within the tower. It was an additional task of the Keepers at revolving lights to wind the mechanism up each hour.
There were certain limitations to these early revolving lights. It is not generally realised that the average lantern weighed several tons and a revolving light which moved on a system of wheels or ball bearings required a strong mechanism to keep it moving around its circular track. The shortcomings of the clockwork systems restricted both the speed of revolution and the weight of the optical system that could be placed in the lantern.
An invention of the late nineteenth century which altered this situation was that of supporting the lantern on a mercury float instead of wheels, a simple enough concept that at once presented several advantages. One was that the speed of revolution could be hastened, giving a faster flashing character; the other was that the superimposed lantern could be of increased weight to accommodate a more powerful light. Lastly, since only the pressure of a finger was required to set the lamp in motion, a motor of much smaller proportion was needed.
David Scott
Excerpt:
Although time would bring its inevitable changes in the period, for much of it the New Zealand Light Service continued to be developed by its two principal architects, John Blackett and Robert Johnson.
They were joined in 1880 by another officer, David Scott who, as Lighthouse Artificer, was responsible for the on-site supervision of all construction and repair work. Although never apparently classified as an engineer, Scott's duties as Artificer are difficult to define, for they fell somewhere between that of engineer and foreman of works, but whatever his status he is accountable in lighthouse history for the remarkable tenacity of purpose and ingenuity with which he accomplished miracles of construction at sites which would even confound a modern engineer.
David Scott supervised the work which went on through 1909, and when Cape Brett was finally lit on 21 February 1910 it was Scott's last lighthouse. After over thirty years of service as Lighthouse Artificer in which he had supervised the erection of lights on the most difficult places on the coast, Scott retired in 1911. No construction task seemed insurmountable to this man who thoroughly deserves his place in lighthouse history. He had survived the most incredibly dangerous tasks allotted to him over so many years; and four years after he retired he was killed when he fell from a train.
In 1862 a lighthouse was planned for the Otago Harbour at Cape Saunders by the Otago Provincial Council, but a lack of funds halted the project even after the lantern had been ordered. The lantern arrived in 1863 with the newly appointed Provincial Marine Engineer from Scotland, James Balfour. He also arrived with the lantern for the Taiaroa Head lighthouse. Balfour would be appointed Colonial Marine Engineer in 1866.
Text and photographs. Copyright © 1999-2009 Mark Phillips. All rights reserved.