Napier man Mario Schmidt spent five years trying to bring a lighthouse back to Bluff Hill and is offering a $500,000 reward to find missing lighthouse lenses. Photo / Warren Buckland
Napier man Mario Schmidt spent five years trying to bring a lighthouse back to Bluff Hill and is offering a $500,000 reward to find missing lighthouse lenses. Photo / Warren Buckland
A Napier man is offering half a million dollars of his own money for the return of a lighthouse lens thought to have been stolen.
The lost lenses are a part of New Zealand’s maritime folklore to Mario Schmidt, who has a long-held fascination with lighthouses.
His bid to recreatea historic lighthouse near the grounds of Napier city’s old prison fell on the deaf ears of council and multiple government agencies, so Schmidt, who owns and operates the Bluff Hill Lighthouse Bed & Breakfast on Bluff Hill, has turned his attention to a new project.
He has offered a reward of $500,000 to anyone who can help him find any of the Fresnel lenses that were used in lighthouses at Napier, Hokitika, and Matiu Somes Island, Wellington.
A Fresnel lens is a type of composite compact lens used in lighthouses around the country and globally since the 1700s.
The lens reduces the amount of material required compared with a conventional lens by dividing the lens into a set of concentric annular sections, allowing the light’s illumination to carry further.
Schmidt believes the lenses went missing from the Pipitea Point Marine Storehouse in Wellington. He said he interviewed people who had worked at the storehouse and believes the lenses would have been taken by staff when it was closed.
Mario Schmidt's 'wanted' poster for the three historic lighthouse lenses he is searching for. Schmidt is offering $500,000 to anyone who can help him find any of the three. Photo / Mario Schmidt
Schmidt claims one of the workers had divulged to him that he had one of the lenses from the storehouse in their possession, which the man claimed was given to them when they closed the storehouse.
“So I was wondering then well, if he ends up with a lens like this, how many others ended up with a lens like that that might be still here in New Zealand? That’s when the whole search for it began.”
He believes there could be a dozen or more lighthouse lenses still in New Zealand, due to the number of auxiliary lenses needed to keep the lighthouse lights shining, but cannot be sure of the total number of lenses out there.
“Before the 80s, people just grabbed the stuff just to make sure they don’t get lost or to protect them. I mean they had all sorts of reasons why they took them.
“Then they ended up in garages in sheets, in boxes and then people forget about it and I’m hoping that, if this gets a little publicity, that people in New Zealand say ‘Hey, so and so has one of them in his lounge or in the garage’.“
However, if a lens is found and he does pay the reward, Maritime New Zealand still legally owns it, so he does not expect to have a lens in his lounge anytime soon.
“Hopefully raising the issue about these losses may motivate someone to come forward after all these years. That is really my main motivation for this quest.”
A Maritime NZ spokesperson said at the time of the lighthouses’ closures, historically the lenses or the optics and associated equipment would have been transferred to another lighthouse or to a museum, but there was limited record-keeping at the time.
The current Maritime NZ practice is to leave the optics on site, or work with a local museum to tell the story of the lighthouse. When Items are returned to Maritime NZ they try to return them to their original site.
If Maritime NZ are made aware of historical lighthouse parts, they will look at ways they can support the storytelling of the lighthouse they were a part of.
