SHIPS FOR SALE.

FOR BREAKING UP.

CLANSMAN AND NGATIAWA.

HULKS IN HARBOUR.

After years of idleness amongst the hulks in "Kotten Row," two well known steamers of the Northern Company's fleet, the Clansman and the Ngatiawa, are for sale by tender for breaking up. Already they themselves are little more than Jmlks, the company having them of all that might be used aboai-d "others of their vessels; their lifebuoys, lifeboats and some of their fittings will continue to "go down to the sea" long after their hulls have eeased to exist as such.

Built at Glasgow in 1884, the Clansman, 635 tons, belonged to an age when seamen were still loth to trust solely to steam for propulsion, and when she arrived in New Zealand she was rigged as a barquentine, showing a considerable area of sail when the wind was fair. Afterwards her masts were reduced in number to two and the yards stripped from her foremast. Like the other vessel of the Northern Company's fleet that bears a Scottish name, the Claymore, she was brought out by Captain McGregor, whose ships were subsequently taken over by the Northern Company.

In all her years of regular service in the- Whangarei and Bay of Islands services the Clansman never met with a mishap until the Northern Company decided, in 1931, that owing to the competition of the railway the tild vessel must be withdrawn. Two weeks before she was to be laid up, on Friday, March 13 (an ominous conjunction of day and date) she left Russell at 10.20 p.m., having aboard 30 passengers, the last she was ever to carry. Off Bird Rock her tailshaft broke, and a launch from Russell took the passengers ashore to go south by train, while the Clansman drifted helplessly seaward. Dispatched from Whangaroa, the paddle steamer Lyttelton reached her at C a.m. next day and took her in tow, the two vessels arriving at Auckland the following Monday. After she had been discharged the Clansman was taken to moorings in Rotten Row, never to go to sea again.

Dating only from 1906, the 451-ton steamer Ngatiawa, also built in Glasgow, is by comparison with the Clansman quite a new vessel, although old as steamers go. Her life in commission was very much shorter, having finished about eight years ago, when she was withdrawn from the West Coast service to lie idle in the stream.