Some 60 ships have been wrecked around Wellington Harbour and the adjacent coasts of Cook Strait. The area’s unpredictable weather, high winds, vicious swells, reefs and high cliffs make it a very dangerous tract of water. The first recorded European shipwreck was that of the barque Winwick which foundered off Lyall Bay in 1841 – just one year after the founding of the city of Wellington.
The area was the scene of two of New Zealand’s worst maritime disasters. In 1909, the passenger ship Penguin hit the rocks while returning across the Strait from Picton and 75 lives were lost. In 1968, the inter-island ferry the Wahine grounded on rocks near Seatoun, just within the Harbour – 51 lives were lost during the incident which saw survivors and bodies cast up on the opposing shore.
The Pencarrow lighthouse was the first attempt to provide proper guidance to vessels using the harbour entrance. It was sited on a prominent headland at the eastern side of the harbour, some 10 kilometres from the nearest settlement along a rough coastal track. Built from prefabricated iron sections that were joined together with massive nuts and bolts, the tower was shipped out from Britain in knock-down form, arriving in 480 packages on the Ambrosire.
It was the first permanent lighthouse to operate in New Zealand and the light was first lit on 1 January 1859. An accompanying shore-level light was built in 1906, as the light on the original structure was sometimes obscured during fogs and storms. In 1935 an electric light was installed at Baring Head further out on the headland, which made the first lighthouse redundant.
New Zealand’s only female lighthouse keeper, Mary Jane Bennett, was the inaugural operator of the lighthouse when it provided a 24 X 7 service. Mary was the wife of the previous keeper, George White Bennett, who had drowned in the harbour in June 1855. She was in charge when the colza oil light first shone and maintained the lighthouse till 1865 when she returned to England. For many years, the lighthouse keepers lived in a cottage on the lee-side of the promontory, maintaining a garden and a small livestock farm.
The tower is now maintained by the Historic Places Trust.
Helen Beaglehole tells the wider story of New Zealand's attempts to safeguard maritime passengers and commerce in her 2007 book: 'Lighting the Coast : A history of New Zealand's coastal lighthouse system'.
Helen accompanied the party of visitors convened by the Historic Places Trust for the annual Open Day and provided a talk on the origins of the structure and its history.
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