BENVENUE CLIFFS
Michael Armstrong (1954)
Blackett on the Breakwater, 2019
Acrylic on canvas
Friends of the Aigantighe Collection, Aigantighe Art Gallery, 2019.24.1
Known as the ‘cemetery of ships’, Timaru historically provided ‘no safe harbour’. The construction of a breakwater, using large concrete blocks, began in 1878 to address the problem.
John Blackett, an engineer and lighthouse designer for the Public Works Department, wrote a progress report for the government on the new breakwater. The findings of the report recommended dismantling the breakwater, because it supposedly caused erosion to a railway viaduct in Caroline Bay. (These predictions were later found to be correct and accelerated erosion to the north affecting the local lagoons).
Blackett’s report was very unpopular at the time and a public protest ensued. A mob of hundreds marched down Stafford Street with an effigy of Blackett, which they blew up at the end of the breakwater on June 2, 1880.
In this painting, seated in the lower left, is Blackett with the wreck of Fairy Queen - a 214-ton brig that broke its mooring in a southeast gale, caught fire and beached on August 27, 1873. Blakett’s effigy is on the right, exploding on the breakwater, next to a reference to Anderson’s crane employed to lift the 30-ton concrete blocks used in the breakwater.
