Wellington's Coastal Defences

On the high points around Wellington Harbour are the remains of fortifications and gun-emplacements built to defend the capital city against attack from the sea.....

Wellington fort building started in earnest in the mid-1880s. This was due to a percieved threat by Russia. These so-called "Russian Scares" were to trigger a massive program of fort building in the four main ports of the time: Auckland, Wellington, Lyttelton and Dunedin. Wellington had forts and other gun emplacements built, initially, at six different sites. Most of these early forts were equiped with Rifled Muzzle Loaders (RML) and the so called disappearing guns. These disapearing guns were often emplaced in a totally enclosed gunpit. When ready to fire the gun would pop up, thus only exposing the gun to enemy fire and leaving the gun crew safely in the pit. This first series were all built on the inner harbour, largely due to the poor range of the weapons of the time.

Battery Observation Post at Fort Dorset

Throughout the years these sites were added to, but nothing new was begun until about 1910 when a new fort was constructed. Armed with two Mk VII 6-inch guns, this battery was the first of a new generation of forts that would be built around the entrance to the harbour. At the end of the First World War the older batteries were scrapped and in most cases, converted to hold ammunition. Little was constructed in this period, until the mid-1930s when a new 6-inch battery was built at Palmer Head. The final phase of fort building began during WW2. A massive underground complex was built at Wrights Hill to house three 9.2-inch guns. With Fort Opau built at Makara to cover the western end of Cook Strait, the system was esentially complete, just in time for the war to end.

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