The road now covers over the slipway tracks, severing the visual connection between the surviving slipway elements on land and those in the water.Īlthough the No. It is overshadowed by the 1980s subdvision on the hill above and a large new apartment block to the north. The Patent Slip Heritage Area is now part of a modest green space on the landward side of the road, the last unbuilt area around Greta Point. Buildings (to the north) and an area of reclaimed land, formerly Cog Park. The water of this bay today sits between the modern residential development that replaced the last of the Union Steamship Co. Greta Point, on the west side of Evans Bay, shelters a small bay to its south, where the Patent Slip is located. Nevertheless, the remnant slipways and rails, combined with the display cog, hint at the past use and complexity of the place. The road cuts off the previously strong visual line of the slipways running into the sea and it is difficult to understand the site as it once was. Once a busy maritime area, today it is a modest green space to the landward side of the road with no industry and no surviving buildings. The Patent Slip area today is a scant shadow of its former self. Little remains on site of the slips apart from one set of rails, but a large cog was returned to the area in 2010 and interpretation installed to explain the area’s history. The second slipway closed in 1980, and the buildings and infrastructure, apart from the concrete slipways and rails, was eventually demolished. The complex operated as a whole until 1972, when the first slipway closed and the equipment was dispersed or scrapped. Over the life of the slip hundreds of vessels were serviced there. A second slipway, parallel to the first, was built in 1922. From 1908 to 1961 the slip was owned and operated by the Union Steam Ship Co., which had a large operational base at Evans Bay.
Numerous hold-ups prevented construction from beginning until 1871. The slip components were pre-fabricated in the United Kingdom and shipped in 1866. Built as a cheap alternative to a dry dock, the slip was devised in the mid-1860s as a way of taking advantage of the proposed construction of the Panama Canal and a predicted increase in shipping traffic, which in the end did not eventuate until the early 20th century. The Evans Bay Patent Slip Heritage Area contains the remains of New Zealand’s first patent slip, which opened in 1873.
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