MANY NEW USES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 98, 28 April 1933, Page 5

MANY NEW USES.

OLD SHIP'S GEAR. FATE OF MISSION STEAMER. PANELLING FOR. A CHURCH. To the accompaniment of the clang of the shipbreakers' hammers, the old Helanesian Mission steamer Southern Cross is becoming less a ship every day. This morning a large lorry rumbled along the Western Viaduct carrying the cabin that was once the sanctum of the master of ■ the mission sliip. Together with the bishop's room and the wireless operator's office, the cabin is to find a home on board an Auckland fishing trawler that is being recommissioned in Freeman's Bay. A wide variety of uses has been found for the equipment of the old mission steamer, and the principal of the Auckland Shipbreaking Company, the concern which is scrapping the vessel, said to-day that her purchase had turned out a sound proposition. The fate of the hull of the ship is still undecided, although at the present time it is not unlikely that it will be towed to sea and sunk. It is possible that the shell will eventually be used to store sliingle, or again it may be cut up and sold as scrap to Japan. Galley for Bush Camp. As already stated, three of the mission ship's cabins are to be rebuilt* on. a trawler. The foremast and the engine room telegraph and indicator will also find a place on the trawler. The ship's wheel and binnacle will live a life ashore—in the bach at Stanley Bay that {3 fitted up as a cabin—while the wheelhouse will next summer be seen on a popular excursion steamer. A large cabin, fitted with six bunks, is to bo shipped to Onetangi for use as a bach; the launch and lifeboats found a ready sale; the galley will in future do service in a bush camp. All the oak panelling, of ecclesiastical design, together with two large arches with chapel doors, have been sold to St. Thomas' Church in Union Street.

The panelling, -which is 5-Bin thick, is in an excellent state of preservation. A number of valves, steam cocks, and copper coils have been purchased by a local freezing company, while some of the booms and derricks are to be utilised for haymaking plants in the Bay of Plenty- Lubricating tanks, of a special circular design, which makes them easy to stow, found favour with local fishermen as reserve fuel supply tanks, while a number of the fresh water containers were purchased by residents living in a district where the condition of tho water supply is causing some concern. Scrap metal of all descriptions has also found a ready sale. Bell Presented to Mission. Doubtless the shipbreakers would easily have found a buyer for the ship's bell —given to the mission by the scholars of Milton Grange School, England —but it was not offered for. sale. Instead, it was presented to the mission as a memento of the ship which, if costly to run, did faithful service among tho isles of Melanesia for many years. The after-mast of the Southern Cross is no longer fit for the service for which it was made, and, together with a considerable quantity of other gear from the ship, is to be cut up for firewood, to be given free of charge to relief workers in one of the Auckland suburbs.