North Head, Engineering Auckland’s Victorian Defences.
By David Veart
By the 1870s the internal conflict of the land wars was mostly over and the colonists turned their attention to possible threats from outside the country. New Zealand at this time was very much part of the British world and from the 1850s onward the main threat to the British imperial power came from the rapidly expanding Russian empire. It was feared that Russian forces would move down through Afghanistan to attack British India. New Zealanders were also very aware of the Russian naval presence at their Pacific base at Vladivostok.
With no defences at New Zealand’s ports, the government came under increasing pressure to provide some. The boldest of these initiatives was a hoax article in the Auckland newspaper the Daily Southern Cross of 18 February, 1873 describing an attack on the city by the Russian cruiser the Kaskowiski. This modern weapon of war with its ‘submarine pinnace’ and ‘mephitic water gas’ had seized the government steamer and was holding the city to ransom. Not realising it was a hoax, people panicked but the point had been made; the city had no way of defending itself.
Numerous official reports on the state of the defences were prepared and in 1882 British defence expert Sir William Drummond Jervois was appointed New Zealand’s governor. Jervois had been involved in planning defences both in Britain and in other parts of the Empire, including Australia. Among his recommendations was that New Zealand appoint a professional military engineer.
In December 1883 a Royal Engineer officer, Major Henry Cautley, was appointed as Jervois’ assistant and in 1884 Jervois delivered a public address summarising their thoughts on the subject. He recommended that forts be constructed at the four main ports and that these be armed with the Rifled Muzzle Loader (RML) guns that the government had already ordered, together with the most up to date weapons available, the extraordinary ‘disappearing guns.’ These pieces of artillery were designed to use the force generated by the recoil to drive the gun back into its underground pit between shots. The use of a hydro-pneumatic system, pressurised by the recoil, meant that these guns could be returned to the surface after being reloaded and aimed out of sight, under the ground. Major Cautley designed a series of very elegant, albeit expensive, forts to emplace this artillery, including batteries at North Head at the entrance to Auckland’s harbour.
At this point the government had the large rifled muzzle loader guns in storage. The plans for Cautley’s series of beautifully designed forts unfortunately were deemed too expensive to build. Just to add to the mix, in March 1885 another Russian war scare occurred. Russian forces moved into northern Afghanistan and war between Britain and Russia seemed imminent. Orders for the new disappearing guns were placed and the Armed Constabulary, as well as three hundred unemployed men, were rushed to North Head to start building defences against the expected Russian attack. The war with Russia came to nothing and the New Zealand government now found itself with the new artillery emplaced in temporary holes in the ground. Another solution was needed.
The answer to the government’s dilemma came in the form of a Royal Artillery officer, Captain Edmund Tudor Boddam, who was busy building forts in Tasmania. Boddam had developed a system of construction which was very much cheaper than Cautley’s more traditional methods. As Boddam described it in his official report of 1886, ‘We have done away with the heavy brick arches usually heretofore adopted, and substituted old rails and concrete, at a reduction of about one-half in cost; and in many other instances made considerable reductions in the costs of materials and labour, without impairing in any way the efficiency of the work.’ Concrete was cheaper to use because it required no skilled bricklayers or expensive bricks. Because concrete could be mixed and poured by unskilled labour, in most cases during this period prisoners did the work on the forts and a barracks at North Head was converted into a prison to house up to 40 inmates. The only skilled workmen required were the carpenters used to build the timber formwork into which the concrete was poured (in a timber rich country carpenters were more common than bricklayers), and a blacksmith to make the metal fittings. At North Head even the blacksmith was a prisoner for most of the 19th century period.
As well as the use of ‘old rails and concrete’ Boddam used innovative solutions to other problems. Much of his design work entailed the use of separate modules. The gun pits, magazine blocks and personnel tunnels were separate designs and could be fitted together to form a fort suitable to each site with the many minor details contained in a ‘General Specification’. He also used pre-cast concrete details for things such as such as corbels, loop-hole apertures and window and lamp recess architraves. Modern contractors have observed that the good design of Boddam's forts has helped them to survive despite the shortcomings of some of the materials used.
While in New Zealand Boddam was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and his efforts were praised by his superior officers.
Sir G S Whitmore wrote in 1886, ‘…in Major Boddam the colony possesses an officer of singular energy, ability, and versatility of talent. Works on so large a scale were probably never attempted in so many different places by any government with so small amount of supervision, and the incessant labour devolving on Major Boddam, and got through by him is almost incredible.’
The structures he designed at North Head, however, are his greatest memorial. They stand now in an Historic Reserve managed by the Department of Conservation. Despite long periods of neglect, Major Boddam’s legacy still forms the major part of the North Head landscape today.
Bibliography
Mitchell, John The Disappearing Guns of Auckland, Thesis (PhD--Anthropology)--University of Auckland, 1995.
Cooke, Peter, Defending New Zealand: Ramparts on the Sea, 1840-1950s, Defence of New Zealand Study Group, 2000