Magazine Bay

Magazine Bay (Māori: Tāpoa) is a small bay in Lyttelton Harbour in the South Island of New Zealand. It is located to the west of the Naval Point reclamation, between the inner harbour of the Port of Lyttelton, and Corsair Bay. The bay takes its name from the 1874 powder magazine building located above the shoreline. The magazine is a Category 1 listed Historic Place. Prior to 1900 the bay was the location of a shipyard, and a shed and slipway for a torpedo boat. A gun emplacement was constructed in 1890 on the headland at Erskine Point above the magazine. Magazine Bay was proposed as the location for a small boat harbour on multiple occasions over the years from 1920 to the 1970s, but none of the proposals went ahead because of the high costs of establishing a conventional breakwater to provide protection from southerly gales. In 1979, the Harbour Board conducted tests on a floating breakwater made from car tyres, and in 1982 opened a boat marina protected by a 300-metre-long (980 ft) floating breakwater. The breakwater was wrecked in a severe southerly storm in October 2000, and more than 30 small boats were sunk. The Magazine Bay marina was eventually demolished in 2023 as part of a development project at Naval Point, to the east of the bay.

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