NEW AKAROA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 187, 9 August 1932, Page 5

NEW AKAROA.

S.S. AND A. LINE STEAMER.

FORMER EURIPIDES RENAMED DUE EARLY NEXT YEAR. Like the steamers Sophocles and Diogenes, which the Shaw, Savill and Albion Company took over from the Aberdeen White Star Line in 1920 and renamed Tamaroa and Mataroa, the Euripides, recently acquired from the same line, is to have a Maori name, Akaroa. This name was formerly borne by a Shaw, Savill and Albion barque of 129$ tons which made many voyages to New Zealand before being sold to a Norwegian company in 1900. The new Akaroa is a steel triple-screw steamer of 14,947 tons, built by Harlaud and Wolff at Belfast in 1914. As the Euripides, she used to run between Australia and Great Britain, via Cape of Good Hope, and carried the All Black Rugby team which toured South Africa in 1928. Her accommodation is being extensively altered, and she is to be converted into an oil burner before being commissioned for the New Zealand service, in which she is to act as a companion ship the Tamaroa and Mataroa, carrying cabin class passengers only. She is scheduled to clear Southampton for New Zealand on her first voyage under the new house flag on December 30, and leave New Zealand again for Southampton and London on March 8.

The Board of Trade, London, at first refused the application of the S.S. and A. Company for permission to name the vessel Akaroa, as there was already a \essel of that name on the register, the 77-ton tug owned by the Parker-Lamb Timber Company, of Auckland. Built at Melbourne in 1875, this vessel was during the gold boom engaged in the Auckland-Coromandel passenger service, but for many years past has been used to tow logs - from coastal ports to Auckland.

The Parker-Lamb Company have agreed to rename their vessel the Waitoa, so as to make the name Akaroa available for the new passenger liner.