Wellington Harbour Board Floating Dock Albums

Descriptive Data

Archives IdentifierAC088Date Range1930-1960DescriptionThese albums contain images of the Jubilee Floating Dock. The dock was purchased in 1930 and arrived in Wellington in 1932. It gave the Board the capacity to dry dock large ships; prior to 1930 docking was carried out at the two patent slips in Evans Bay.

The Floating Dock had a capacity of 17,000 tons and was a significant investment for the Board. The Harbour Board sold the floating dock in 1988.

The majority of the photographs in Album 1 were sent to J Marchbanks, the General Manager of the Wellington Harbour Board, by Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson Ltd, the manufacturers of the dock. These images may have been the motivation for creating the albums but no documentation has been found to confirm this. The department that created and managed the albums is not known but letters in the Inwards Correspondence (held as series AC020) suggests that photographs of the dock were directed to and distributed from the Secretary’s/Head Office Department. There are no original inventories/indexes. There are records of photographers contracted by the WHB, with references to most of the named photographers in the albums to be found in the Sundry Accounts (held as series AC065). For example AC065:1:2 lists the purchase of ‘Ruahine in dock, 14 enlargements’ from S C Smith in May 1932; photographs by S C Smith of the Ruahine in the dock dated 1932 appear in Album 2.

Following the dissolution of the Wellington Harbour Board in 1989 the albums were transferred to the custody of the Maritime Museum. Some pencilled notations appear to have been made in the albums during their time at the Museum. The Maritime Museum took copy negatives of some of the prints, probably directly from the negative if there was one. Museum copy numbers are usually referred to as “WMM copy number.” It is known that the Museum still holds a number of the copy negatives that it took from the WHB collections.Quantity (Linear Metres)1MediumPhotographSystem of ArrangementBy volumeCollection TypeWellington Museums Trust

Document Folder

WHB Photographs of Construction of the Jubilee Floating Dock, 1930-1931

WHB Photographs of Vessels in the Jubilee Floating Dock, 1932-1934

WHB Photographs of Vessels in the Jubilee Floating Dock, 1934-1947

WHB Photographs of Vessels in the Jubilee Floating Dock, 1948-1960

Access Information

Restriction StatusOpen

Related Agencies

Controlling or Creating AgencyWellington Harbour BoardRelationship Date Range1880-1989

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Wellington Harbour Board Floating Dock Albums