PROGRESS OF STEAM.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 171, 21 July 1924, Page 7

PROGRESS OF STEAM.

GREAT STRIDES I> T DOMINION. Perhaps very few people could say when the first steamer came to New Zealand. In the course of replying to the toast of "Shipping" at the Commercial Travellers' annual dinner on Saturday pvening, Mr. David Carter, "manager of the Union Company, gave some interesting details about the matter. The first steamer in the Southern Hemisphere, he said ran in 1831. The first veescl came out to Australia in parts from the Old Country, and ran between Parraraatta. and Sydney. The first steamer to enter a New Zealand port was a little boat called the Inflexible, which came into Port Chalmers in 1841, and Governor Grey and his lady were passengers. Referring to the Union Company, he recalled the fact that it started in 1875 with live steamers, of a total tonnage of 2295. Jt had increased until in 1880 it had eight steamers, of a total tonnage of 8532, and to-day they had seventy-eight steamers, whose combined tonnage was 251.000. Next March or April the Diesel engine boat Aorangi, 18,000 tons, 500G tons larger than the Niagara, would be arriving. She was the largest boat of i her clas3 yet built, and whs somewhat j in the nature of an experiment, but the company had great faith in her. Captain Hammond, manager of the Northern Company, said his company, formed 30 or 40 years ago, had gone i on expanding until to-day It had something like 40 boats and carried between 200,000 and 300,000 passengers a year. I