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New Zealand's Burning — The Settlers' World in the Mid 1880s

Overview of coastal shipping 1885

Overview of coastal shipping 1885

Coastal shipping provided New Zealand's first North-South transport main trunk, decades before the railway main trunk became effective. Figure 14.2
Figure 14.2. Main patterns of coastal shipping, 1885

Figure 14.2. Main patterns of coastal shipping, 1885

page 213 gives an overview of the main flows of shipping movements in 1885. It will be seen that the majority of the more important coastal ports were on the east and that sailings between east coast ports made up nearly three quarters of the coastal traffic. Some details of the rationale of the chart need explanation. At the north of the South Island Pelorus Sound and Picton are treated as east coast but the rest of the Sounds are treated as west coast. Wellington is treated as lying on the west-east boundary. Sailings from Wellington to west coast ports are allotted to the west, and sailings to east coast ports are allotted to the east. Figure 14.2 is concerned with movements between ports, not with complete voyages, and since many vessels called at Wellington on voyages between east and west it understates the importance of Cook Strait.13 The allocation of Wellington sailings to the west coast (31 per cent) and to the east coast (69 per cent), and the estimation of the 7 per cent figure for movements between the two coasts, are based on a 40 day sample (first 10 days of each quarter) of sailings from Wellington and from all east coast ports.

As to the amount of work the coasters were doing, we can only make the roughest of guesses. A firm answer needs reliable inputs for the equation: total sailings tonnage x average haul x carrying co-efficient = total ton-mileage. The official sailings tonnage figure of 3,523,683 is an underestimate as it accounts for only 29 ports. Thus it omits sailings with thousands of tons of timber from such harbours as Havelock, Waitapu and Collingwood. The average hauls for our Cook Strait Lake and Greymouth collier samples can be worked out—132.5 miles for the former, 478 for the latter. But Figure 14.9 shows the east coast voyages to be the most significant element. Here distances between the main ports are: Port Chalmers-Lyttelton 221.9 miles, Lyttelton-Wellington 199.8 miles, Wellington-Napier 240.7 miles, Napier-Gisborne 99 miles, Gisborne-Auckland 341 miles.14 A 200 mile average for the colony's 1885 sailings looks likely. More difficult to estimate is the carrying co-efficient, which relates the amount of cargo actually carried to the registered tonnage. For the lowest conceivable figure 0.65 is suggested, which is probably ridiculous in the light of James Mills' skilful management of the main carrier. For a high figure we will use 1.32, the coefficient of the 1910 UK coastal fleet, calculated from John Armstrong's study. This fleet's composition in terms of size of vessels and mix of sail and steam was remarkably similar to the NZ 1885 fleet, but its business was markedly different. Taking our figures as 3,500,000 × 200 × 0.65 or 1.32 we get total ton-mileages of 455,000,000 and 924,000,000. These work out as 7 times and 14 times the year's ton-mileage on the railways.