THE CRUSADER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 21, 25 January 1934, Page 5

THE CRUSADER.

OLD-TIME CLIPPER.

PASSENGERS IN AUCKLAND. REUNIONS SUGGESTED. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) CHRISTCHURCH, this day. The Clipper Ship Crusader Association ifl anxious that a branch of their organisation should be formed in Auckland, as there are many old colonists in the northern province who arrived on the Crusader some fifty years ago.

Annually members of the association hold a reunion in Christchurch. Membership is restricted to those who have been 50 years in New Zealand and a few of their immediate descendants, and proof has to be supplied that the applicants came out on the Crusader.

For many years the Crusader made regular runs to Lyttelton with immigrants, and then, in 1884, she began a series of voyages with Auckland as her terminal port. Still later she landed lier passengers at Invercargill.

Mr. J. H. Timms, president of the Clipper Ship Crusader Association, said to-day that he hoped to have branches formed in both Auckland and Invercargill, so that there would be 110 break in the continuity of the observance of each fiftieth anniversary of the ship's arrival. "Now we have come to the golden jubilee of the Auckland period," said Mr. Timms, "we feel that the Crusader has, as it were, sailed away from us for a while, as the anniversaries which we celebrate are only those of the ship's arrival at Lyttelton. Naturally we would like the people of Auckland to observe the anniversary in their own city, and members of the association here would be present in sympathy with them. No doubt the celebration could be arranged for the same date in each city, and greetings could be exchanged."

The secretary of the Old Colonists' Association •will be written to in the hope of founding an Auckland branch.