Percy Wells (businessman)

Percy Wells (15 February 1825 – 2 December 1909) was an English businessman who had a career in the colony of South Australia.

He arrived in Port Adelaide in May, 1858, and for nearly two years worked as accountant for the Adelaide Advertiser. He was then engaged by the firm of Philip Levi & Co., in which his uncle Alfred Watts was a partner.

Subsequently he entered into partnership Watts as agents for English investors who had a plan unveiled in 1869 to construct an outer harbour in Largs Bay free of cost to the South Australian Government. This project, if approved, would allow the berthing of ships of deeper draught than possible in Port Adelaide, despite extensive (and expensive) dredging. The scheme was well received by the Adelaide newspapers, but unsurprisingly opposed by vested interests at Port Adelaide, and was rejected by a select committee of the Legislative Council. It would have meant giving the consortium monopoly rights to the facilities provided, a not dissimilar situation to the modern provision of toll roads. A later, Government funded, scheme was promoted by Rowland Rees MHA.

Wells acted as agent in South Australia for the English marine engineering firm of Wells Brothers, of which his brother George Wells was a principal. George was a licensee of Mitchell's screw pile patent, a system for rigidly mounting structures to solid rock. Wells submitted a tender to the South Australian Government for installation of a lighthouse on the Margaret Brock Reef using this technology, and despite protestations of men like O. A. Babbage, the tender was as accepted. The tender price had however been based on a false assumption of the number of days calm enough to operate the machinery and the one year job ended up taking three, and resulted in the bankruptcy of the contractor W. F. King. But the work was eventually completed and the Cape Jaffa lighthouse went into operation in 1872.

He later controlled the erection of the Tiparra Reef lighthouses, a jetty on the Cape Jaffa reef, and jetties at Kingston SE and Rivoli Bay. Disputes arose between the firm of Wells Brothers and the Government, and after legal proceedings and reference to arbitration the latter agreed to take over the plant and material and finish the work.

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