Southern View: March 27, 2018

10 Tuesday March 27 2018
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SOUTHERN VIEW
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Fire rages, homes at risk
Images close to former seaman’s heart
• By Sarla Donovan
EIGHTY seven-year-old
John Fenton has laminated
photographs of steamships
including some he worked on
in the 1950s and 1960s and
has created intricate, knotted
macrame frames for them.
He’s hoping to exhibit the images
at the Lyttelton Information
Centre, as a fundraiser for the
rebuild of Lyttelton Museum of
which he is a life member.
The photographs come from
John Farquar’s book Union Fleet
1875-1975 which details the
history of the Union Steamship
Company.
Mr Fenton first went to sea for
them in 1949 as a deck boy on
the TES Wahine, working the
daily steamer-express sailing between
Lyttelton and Wellington.
This was the first Wahine, not
the one that foundered and sank
in Wellington Harbour in 1968.
He stayed with the Union
Steamship Company for 14
years, graduating from deck boy
to able seaman and boatswain.
Always good with his hands,
he taught himself macrame and
also makes fancy bell ropes for
ships; one of the only people
remaining who makes them. He
still does this for Canterbury
Museum.
Mr Fenton and his wife Kitty
have lived in Sumner for 55 years,
raising three children there.
But his is actually one of the
oldest families from over the
hill in Lyttelton. His greatgrandfather
was born there and
his great-grandmother “Nanny
Fenton” had 13 children who
almost all married in Lyttelton,
including his own father Albert.
After leaving school in 1945,
Mr Fenton worked in an office
job but found it stifling and
threw it in after four years.
“I couldn’t stand the office; the
SKILLS: 87-year-old John Fenton proudly shows his macrame framework for pictures of ships in the Union
PHOTO: MARTIN HUNTER
Fleet.
collar and tie was choking me. I
followed my dad out to sea. He
was a cook and steward on the
old Canopus that used to run
from Westport and Greymouth
to Lyttelton with coal.”
Upon marrying his wife Kitty,
Mr Fenton gave up the sea, taking
a job onshore in the rigging
loft at Lyttelton Port.
It was a deliberate choice,
having seen “too many fellas not
sending money home and going
on the booze. I thought well
that’s not for me.”
They share a keen interest in
history, as Mrs Fenton works
at the Sumner Museum several
times a week. Mr Fenton created
the knot board that is displayed
there, showing the many different
types.
And they’re both life members
of the Karamea Museum – that’s
where Mrs Fenton comes from.
Of the 20 or so of the steamship
photographs, Mr Fenton
has now completed frames for
about 16 and he plans to gift
them to Lyttelton Museum.
The photographs were originally published in the book The
Union Fleet, by Ian Farquhar. The Korowai (left) was the last
ship he worked on.