MORE ABOUT THE CLANSMAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 81, 7 April 1931, Page 6

MORE ABOUT THE CLANSMAN.

Thousands of people 'will, have memories, pleasant or otherwise, of coastwise travel in the steamer Clansman, now placed on the honourablyretired list, after nearly half a century's service to North Auckland and to Tauranga. She was quite a luxury ship, the Clansman, in her early years on the coast when all trade with the North was by sea. The Wairarapa, in the Union S.S. Company's fleet, and the Clansman, in the Northern Cpmpany's, represented the latest ideas in ship-furnishing and comfort for passengers. Like most other steamers of her size, forty years ago she could set a good deal of sail. Originally she was a three-masted vessel, square-rigged on the foremast. Her sharp lines indicated speed. She could roll somewhat, one remembers, unless steadied by sail. But, writing qf rolling, nothing in that maritime habit could surpass an exhibition we once witnessed from the Clansman's deck. It was at the time of the wreck of the Elingamite, bound from Sydney to Auckland, at the Three Kings very nearly thirty years ago. The Clansman was dispatched from Auckland to pick up boats' crews and search for survivors adrift. Off the North Cape the steamer spoke H.M.s. Penguin, the old-fashioned survey ship, then busy re-charting the coast. The two vessels ran up close to each other and stopped, and the captains consulted loudly across the water regarding the search programme. In the 'big swell the Clansman was a lively enough ship, but the heavily-sparred Penguin —she was barque-rigged, like the rest of her class—went over so far at each roll, displaying most of her. glistening copper, that we every moment expected to see her keel. They must have been well-seasoned salts in that rough-and-tumble old survey ship. On that emergency cruise the Clansman called at Houhora Heads for a lifeboat from the* wrecked ship with about forty people on board. That- crowded boat had sailed from the Three Kings in a fog, and by great good luck and skilful management reached Houhora, a run of seventy miles, with her people all well. We went round the Three Kings, sighting a lot of floating wreckage, 'but nothing of any human driftaways. It was the roll-and-go old Penguin that distinguished herself as a life-saver in a very dramatic way. After the Clansman left her the Navy ship zig-zagged well out to sea and picked up far out of sight of land one of the Elingamite's missing rafts with several people on board; some had died and the others would soon have perished from thirst and starvation. The Penguins were proud sailormen when they came in at the utmost speed they could get out of their engines up Auckland Harbour a few hours after the Clansman returned, and reported their successful search. The survivors and their saviours were the heroes of the hour in Auckland. —TANGIWAI.