MORE SCRAP IRON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 87, 13 April 1933, Page 5

MORE SCRAP IRON.

BOILER FROM ONEHUNGA.

BAST COAST WRECK RECALLED.

A great and miscellaneous collection of scrap iron has been made in the city since a market for it has been found in Japan. One piece of sci'ap, an old boiler, which was brought in from Onehunga to the city to-day, - has associations with early coastal shipping and an iron foundry at Onehunga. It i 3 reliably stated to have been the boiler of the steamer Thomas Russell, which had a short career trading on the east coast. This vessel was 'built in England for the Waikato Coal an I Steam Company, but three years after her arrival she was wrecked at Orete Point, in the Bay of Plenty. Her loss occurred during a gale which raged on the coast on March 13, 1885. The salvage of the boiler and its transportation to Auckland, no mean feat in those days, followed, and it ifi stated that it was drawn on a lorry by a dozen horse* and taken out and installed in the Onehunga iron works. There it was utilised in the manufacture of sheet iron. With the sale of the works the boiler's usefulness terminated, and it was removed into the yard. There it lay until a party of Onehunga stalwarts, in a merry mood, rolled it out of the yard down towards the Manukau foreshore.. It remained in the vicinity of the present railway station, rusting away, for about three decades. As scrap iron it has missed better markets in the interval, and the Onehunga. Borough Council was glad to quit it at 3/6 a ton. It was not the councils fault that it ever came into their possession, for when the owners w ere called on to remove the boiler _ they made a I present of. it to the council.