Another Union Co. vessel goes

Press, 18 September 1976, Page 2

Another Union Co. vessel goes

Lyttelton said farewell to yet another Union Steam Ship Company vessel when the roll-on ship Union Wellington sailed yesterday. The vessel, two years and a half old, headed for Europe for “disposal” after having been laid up in Wellington since last November.

The Union Wellington called at Lyttelton and Auckland for Sydney cargo. She is expected to sail for Europe from Sydney next Thursday. The Union Wellington, then new, entered service on the Tasman run to Adelaide in February, 1974.

Though she saw less than two years service, the Union Company said there was no suggestion that she had been a failure.

A Union Company executive (Mr P. Maxwell) said on Thursday that she had been bought at the height of the Tasman trade boom, when the Union Company was under intense pressure from manufacturers to increase its cargo-carrying capacity. “We took whatever was available at the time,” he said.

Mr Maxwell declined to say exactly where in Europe the Union Wellington was going, or what would be done with her, saying only that “arrangements are in hand for her disposal.”