Blenheim Scow Has Colourful History

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30338, 14 January 1964, Page 13

Blenheim Scow Has Colourful History

"The Press” Special Service

WELLINGTON. January 13. A last relic of the days of sailing ships now trading out of Wellington, the 58-year-dd Eckford and Company scow, Echo, is Cook Strait’s most colourful ship. Now on the patent slip for annual overhaul, the 104 ft vessel was laid down in the Kaipara Harbour in 1005. In spite of her broad beam of 25 feet and flat bottom, she has been a film star, a fighting ship, and a supplier of food and munitions to United States servicemen in the Solomon Islands and New Hebrides.

Built as a topsail schooner for Richardson and Company, Napier, the Echo has been owned and operated in the Cook Strait service by Eckford and Company since 1918. Her present master is Captain J. Dalziel, of Eastbourne, a coastal master with long experience out of Wellington and on the New Zealand coast Her normal trading voyage from Wellington is the most arduous normal trip out of the port The Wairau bar is a permanent hazard across her route to Blenheim. Year after year the bar has held the little ship fast sometimes for weeks. The narrow Opawa river, leading to Blenheim, makes a twisting, turning course, where the bows and rigging of the foremast crash through overhanging willow trees. Cook Strait is a severe 'trial for any small sailing ship, even though the Echo today is powered with two 95 hp. Diesels and uses her mainsail largely for stability. In 1932, with visibility blotted out by a rain-squall, the Echo hit a rock at the harbour entrance near Pencarrow Light in a southerly gale. Anchoring across the harbour with steering chains broken, the scow capsized after her crew of 10 and a passenger left her. She was found next day by the Wellington Harbour Board tug, Toia, and towed into port where the Hikitia righted her. Taken over by the United States during the Second World War, the Echo, as a supply ship, made 2000 miles sea voyages every six weeks. She completed a total of 40,000 miles as the only United States sailing vessel actively employed in war service. She was attacked by

Japanese aircraft and chased by a submarine. When handing her back in Blenheim after the war, her United States commander said the little Ship had done all that was asked of her and she had been asked for a lot. In Cook Strait in 1948, battling against a north-west gate, the ship again had to call in the aid of the tug Toia to ger her into port. In the early 1930’s she had featured in a collision with this same big tug, and also with the harbour femes to Eastbourne, the Cobar and the Muritai. In 1959 Columbia Pictures Corporation sought her services for a film of her wartime exploits. She was offered by her owners for photography round the New Zealand coast, but as the company’s only ship and something of an heirloom, she could not be spared for a long period overseas. Film Version

The film of the U.S.S. Echo showed a similar vessel as "The Wackiest Ship in the Army,” which appeared in Wellington in 196 i. As it featured the efforts of a greenhorn landlubber crew to handle a pure sailing vessel, while the Echo during war service had been largely power-driven, the film brought snorts of laughter from her owners and crew. Today, with a new mainsail, a new pair of powerful engines and a new coat of copper paint to keep out the teredo worm, the scow was “good for another 50 years,” said her owner, captain Thomas Eckford, of Blenheim. "Her timbers are sound enough and should be good for a good number of years. A lot of new timber went into her after the Second World War when the teredo got into her during her islands service. “Now we keep the copper paint on her and she is as good as gold. You can’t put a time limit on this sort of ship. Timber doesn’t rust.”