Miller’s Boat Slip at Corsair Bay

In 1861, the quiet bay just around the corner from the port of Ōhinehou Lyttelton, known to local Māori as Motu-kauati-iti, acquired the English name of Corsair Bay when a strong south-wester drove Captain Thomas Gay’s brigantine, the Corsair, onto the rocks there. Motu-kauati-iti Corsair Bay's sheltered waters were a favourite swimming spot in the late 1800s, especially after the local beach – and site of the Māori settlement of Ōhinehou – at Dampier Bay disappeared beneath the land reclamation using spoil from the 1867 Lyttelton rail tunnel construction.

While Corsair Bay’s waters were a popular swimming spot, its shores were given over to the colonial industries of the day, such as an abattoir with its bloody runoff that unfortunately also attracted the harbour’s sharks: for that reason, amongst others, it was moved to neighbouring Motu-kauati-rahi Cass Bay in the 1880s. Along with William Langdown’s (later Prisk and Williams’) brick kiln, the bay also accommodated shipbuilding, with the Glasgow‐built paddle wheel steamer and river ferry Avon being assembled there in February 1860. For a time, the Lyttelton Rifle Club, formed in the 1860s, operated a shooting range in the bay.

In 1874, one of Whakaraupō Lyttelton Harbour’s first Pākehā shipbuilders, Malcolm Miller, built a shipyard and slipway in Corsair Bay. Malcolm had been born in 1838 in Lochranza, a fishing village on the Isle of Arran, Firth of Clyde, Scotland. In 1862 he relocated to Dunedin in Aotearoa New Zealand, along with many other Scotsmen of his generation, during the Otago Gold Rush. Establishing himself initially in Invercargill as a shipwright, he married Mary MacDonald in 1863. The family moved through Picton, Greymouth, and Whanganui before eventually settling in Ōhinehou Lyttelton in 1874.

The Miller family's shipwright operations at Corsair Bay specialised in the construction and maintenance of coastal vessels, with the boat slip capable of handling craft of up to 70 tons. This included Malcolm Miller’s own, soon to be famous, racing yacht Pastime. Constructed in 1886, Pastime was the major competitor for the champion yacht Little Wonder, a creation of the equally renowned Sinclair family of Lyttelton shipbuilders. In a demonstration of Miller’s shipwright credentials, Pastime secured both a strong victory in the Lyttelton Regatta of 1890 and its status as champion yacht of the day!

The Miller shipyard remained in Corsair Bay for 33 years before finally moving to the Lyttelton Port facilities in 1907 when the bay was redeveloped by the Lyttelton Borough Council and declared a ‘pleasure resort for the public of Canterbury’. After Malcolm Miller's demise in 1909, the family business was assumed by his eldest son, Malcolm James ('Jimmy') Miller. Jimmy had substantial involvement in property matters and served as the Mayor of Lyttelton from 1910 to 1913.

In 1913 the business transitioned to his brother, John D Miller, who maintained control until his death in 1920. Subsequently, the family business was entrusted to his son, Malcolm's grandson, Alex Miller. Despite the loss of a leg during his service in Belgium in World War I, Alex upheld the family's fine shipbuilding tradition for decades after. Known as the 'one-legged yachtsman', he continued to successfully compete in yacht racing, taking full ownership of Pastime in 1934. Alex Miller passed in 1971.