Memory box
I have a feeling I may have used the words wharf and jetty interchangeably over the years, but it turns out that they are different, albeit very similar, beasts.
A jetty is a small pier at which ships can dock or be moored; the word being derived from the French word for ‘to throw’, which conjures in my mind a structure that is ‘thrown’ out in to the water. A wharf, on the other hand, is a quayside area to which a ship can be moored for loading and unloading.
Such are the vagaries of the English language that the more one looks at these two definitions the more they seem to morph in to one another. Still this week’s heritage structure is a wharf and not a jetty.
After several years of planning and discussion, tenders were called by the Raglan Highway Board for a stone wharf at Raglan in February 1874.
The board had been established in 1867 and appears to have survived until 1888, at which time its functions were likely subsumed by the Raglan County Council and Raglan Harbour Board. The limestone wharf was approaching completion by July 1874, although in August it was reported that although the wharf was finished no one had signed it off for use and thus the public was still denied access to it.
Archives New Zealand holds correspondence dating from July August 1874 in which N (sic) Karaka Ngatipare was seeking permission to erect a store to the south of the new wharf. The request was granted, subject to the highway board selecting the site. Mita Karaka Ngatipare was the agent for the Raglan and Waikato Native Company and had support from local Maori and Europeans, including the Chairman of the Raglan Highway Board, for his endeavour.
Control of the wharf was vested with the Raglan Town Board in April
1882. Because it could only be used to best effect at high tide, work began on Raglan’s second wharf, opposite the junction of Cliff and James Street, in
1889. Even after it was eclipsed by the James Street wharf, the town’s first wharf remained in use and was a focus for community events such as the Raglan Regatta in the early 20th century.
The boat shed on the wharf was removed after 1911 and at some time later the stone blocks of the wharf were surfaced in concrete.
The Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington holds some of the Gilmour Brothers’ photographs of the wharf in
1910.
The third, and current, wharf at the east end of Wallis Street dates to
1919-21.
Today the site of the first Raglan Wharf is a recreational reserve that offers views of the harbour and Te Kopua Domain. It’s also a good place to eat fish and chips.