water bath, and a Mechanics' Institute. Education was provided by a District High School, a Roman Catholic school, a Technical School, and several private kindergartens. The town was protected by a company of the Permanent Artillery, and the Garrison Artillery Volunteers. In 1906 when it was found that only 28 boys and one girl could swim out of a roll of 432 pupils at the local school could swim, swimming lessons were added to the curriculum and held in the partially-filled graving dock. A road tunnel linking Sawyers Bay with Waitati as part of a new north motorway from Dunedin was proposed in the 1930s but never built. By 1961 the town had a population of 3,120. A new faster, harbourside road from the city was completed in 1965. The selection of Port Chalmers as the South Island's first container terminal in 1971 re-established Port Chalmers as the South Island’s major commercial port to – much the dismay of the locals, who had enjoyed several generations of bohemian tranquility by this point. In 1979, passenger trains between Port Chalmers and Dunedin ceased after 106 years of operation. All the buildings at the Upper Station were subsequently removed. The container traffic continued to expand and while a new expanding trade in timber developed in parallel but the greatly reduced labour needs of these trades saw the town's population contract. Controversial attempts to site an aluminum smelter at Aramoana at the mouth of the harbour in 1975 and 1980 didn't succeed. From the 1970s an artists' colony grew up in Port Chalmers and Carey's Bay contributing to tensions over the port's continuing industrial development and giving a different flavour to the town. In 1987 the Port Chalmers Old Identities Society's collection was transferred to the old Post Office building and reopened as the Port Chalmers Museum. This has since been renamed the Regional Maritime Museum. Although the Victoria Channel has been gradually widened, and kept dredged to a depth of , modern cruise ships and container vessels are so big that they often draw in excess of the depth restriction while the narrowness of the channel means must be piloted along it by tugs. As a result being closer to the open sea as well as its easier berthing makes Port Chalmers the preferred port of call. In the 2018–2019 financial year 208,600 containers were handled by the port while 1.15 million