A LINER LADY.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 49, 21 November 1907, Page 10

A LINER LADY.

ARRIVAL OF THE MAORI. \ A RAPID TRIP. "Tho Liner, She's a Lady," sings Kipling, but more often she is a noisy, fractious jade, reckless of hurting everybody's feelings so soon as the first ill wind crosses her. But tho Union Company's new vessol Maori is not of this unmannerly disposition. '• in the opinion. of enthusiastic passengers who admired her in their waiving moments and blessed her. in'their .unexpected Asleep from Godley Head to Pencarrow on Tuesday riigh't, she fully justified Kipling's designation. Black but comely, swift and light of movement, she clove her way through the dense loagues of water as smoothly as if she but skimmed their surface. Not many of her passengers knew that a stiff nor'-wester blow all through the night, with a chopping sea, and when finally she glided up alongside the wharf of her own sweet disposition, without strain of guiding line, the admiration of her travellers-reached its height. NO. VULGARITY.

The Maori is a lady in her gentleness and manners. Hor rapid motion is accompanied by none of that vulgar throbbing which makes the senses ache, and upsets one's morality on ■ the old ruder steamers. A gentle thrill was all her passongers experienced. "I would not have believed the difference," said a mail'who has travelled frequently on the Lyttelton ferry service during several years. "I expected a good deal, but I gr» more. On the top deck you could hardly toll you were at sea." Captain Manning, who came up from Dunedm in the Maori as a passenger, and took command from yesterday, expressed the opinion that the now turbine steamer went very well indeed, there being almost no vibration. Shew as' very speedy, too, though she had not been; pushed upon this trip. Her time of ten hours from wharf to wharf is not a record, the Maliono having made the running in 9 hours 50 minutes. From heads to heads the Maori took 9 hours 20 minutes, beating the previous rccord of 9 hours 40 minutes, held by; H.M.S. Orlando. Tho Mararoa lias done tho trip from wharf to wharf in 10 hours 32 minutes. A SHIP BEATIFIED: , In her internal fittings—tho ■ seductive music room with j grand piano, the richly, furnished dining saloon,-, with stained-glass dome, the smakb room, with voluptuous lounges—tho Maori achieves a new ideal of the luxury of travel. Th&- "Mantelpiece" was never so " beatified." All her comforts were appreciated by the passengers of Tuesday night, and gized upon with' admiration by some hundreds of the curious who visited tho vessel yesterday as she lay beside the wharf. From her decks,. even while she was speeding through the wntef, one could' appreciate the sea as the beautiful and reposeful clement which the poets'-praise—oa land. - 'A. • Lady Ward, who ■ christened r 'the new steamer at Dumbarton, and parliamentary and other guests visited tho Msiori. in the afternoon, took tea on board,, and became acquainted with hor numerous attraction*. INITIAL DISABILITIES.

The coal, was .not acting well on Tuesday night, the. wind.and sea were both opposed to speed, the pulse of the immense maclrine, her great and,, intricate engines; are not yet familiar by long knowledge to the M'Andrew down below, watching them with reverent delight, and for these and other reasons the Maori was noj; put to her : full speed oh the run up from Lyttelton. It is understood that'she was doing about 20 knots an hour till midnight, and after that about • 18. Captain Livingstone, who took yesterday his sorrowful farewell of the naval beauty, states that on her trial trips at home she. registered 21 knots. We have-yet.to see the Maori on her mettle. ... ; A crowd ,of several hundred people watched her leave for the South last night.