FROM SAIL TO OIL

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 184, 7 May 1928, Page 8

FROM SAIL TO OIL

SOME SHIPPING HISTORY

ADVENT OF NEW ZEALANDIC

SHAW, SAVILL AND ALBION

LINE RECORD

A notable event in Dominion shipping and in the history of her owners, the Shaw, Savill, and Albion Company, w::s the arrival at Lyttelton during the week-end of the motor ship Zealandic on her maiden' voyage from England.

This fine ship, which was fully described recently in “The Dominion,” has come out in ballast direct from the builders’ yards at Newcastle-on-Tyne to take the loading berth for London. She will receive prompt dispatch, and after loading att Lyttelton, Bluff, Wellington, and Auckland, will sail for London in May. The Zealandic, which is stated to. be the highest powered motor cargo ship in the world, has an insulated cargo capacity that is only slightly exceeded by two other ships in the Argentine trade. She will shortly share these distinctions with three sister ships, Taranaki, Karamea, and Coptic, which are now being completed for the Shaw, Savil, and' Albion Company.

New Ships Under Old Names. It is interesting to note that the company has perpetuated in its new motor vessels names that have long been associated with the Shaw, Savill, and Albion house flag, and consequently with the New Zealand trade. The Zealandic is the second vessel of hat name, which was formerly carried by the steamer of SO9O tons built in 1911 by Harland and Wolff, Limited, for the joint service of the White star Line and Shaw, Savill and Albion Company. That vessel was transferred about eighteen months ago to the Aberdeen White Star Line, and renamed Mamilius. She loaded in New Zealand a few months ago. The second of the new motor ships will be the Taranaki, which will shortly leave London for the Dominion. She bears a name that was familiar to New Zealand ports during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The first Tarankai and her sisters, Lyttelton and Westland, were the last sailing ships built for the Shaw, Savill and Albion Company and its associates. Taranaki was Janies Galbraith’s last ship, and Westland Patrick Henderson’s. AU three were built 50 years ago by Duncan of Glasgow, and were fast ships that made good reputations in the Lon-don-New Zealand trade. The Taranaki was a full-rigged ship of 1126 tons register and 228 feet in length (less than half the length and oneeigth of the tonnage of the new motorship). The first Taranaki was sold to Italians when the Shaw, Savill and Albion Company parted with their sailers at the beginning of the present century, and, owned in Genoa, was still afloat when the Great War started in August, 1914. The Karamea wall carry the name of a steamer of 5564 tons register, built in 1899, that was employed by the Shaw, Savill and Albion Company in the New Zealand trade for about a quarter of a century. She was a sister-ship of the Sussex, the sole survivor of a number of similar steamers built during the period of the South African war for the New Zealand trade. The Karamea was sold to an Italian flrm about three years ago. The Sussex is employed by the Union Company in the Calcutta trade. The fourth of the new motor-ships will be the Coptic, a name which was selected in preference to the suggested Canberric, because it revived a name which was once almost a “household word” in Now Zealand. The first Coptic was one of the earliest steamers built for the London-New Zealand trade. She was owned by the White Star Line, for whom she was built in ISBI by Harland and Wolff at Belfast. She was a steamer of 4356 tons gross register, and rigged as a fourmasted barque, carried a fair amount of sail in favourable weather. In conjunction with the Doric, and later with the first Tainui and Arawa and lonic, the Coptic ran regularly in the passenger and mail service between London and New Zealand for about twenty years. The Coptic and Doric were then transferred to the White Star Line’s transpacific service between San Francisco and Japan and China.

Progress of Shaw, Savill and Albion Company.

An unbroken connection of nearly three-quarters of a century with the New Zealand trade has been maintained bv the Shaw, Savill and Albion Company, which lias progressed from’ small wooden and iron sailing ships of 750 to 1200 tons to great steamers, and now to the “last word” in motor cargo ships. The firm of Shaw, Savill ami Company started sending ships to New Zealand about . seven-ty-three years ago, making fifteen sailings a year. Among their earliest ships were the wooden barque Edwin Fox, 536 tons, built in 1553, now a hulk at the Picton freezing works, the Chile, 768 tons, Euterpe, 1197 tons, Himalaya, 1008 tons, Soukar 1304 tons, Crusader 1059 tons, Helen Dennv 72S tons (now a coal hulk at Wellington), Elizabeth Graham 598 tons, Langstone 746 tons, Zealandia 1116 tons, and Nerope 1054 tons. The Crusader, in 1577, ran from Lyttelton to the Lizard in 69 days, and in 1878 from London to Port Chalmers in 65 days, performances never beaten by any other sailing ship. The chief rival of Shaw, Savill and Company before the advent of the New Zealand Shipping Company was Patrick Henderson, who owned the Albion Shipping Company, and who was also in the China and Rangoon trades. His first ships in the New Zealand emigrant service included the I’ladda, Helenslee and Wild Deer (1016 tons). In 1869 the Otago, Janies Nicol Fleming (later Napier), Jessie Readman, and Christian McCausland were built for Patrick Henderson’s New Zealand trade.

Pioneers of Frozen Meat Trade. . The two firms amalgamated in ISS2 under the title of Shaw, Savill, and Albion Company, Limited, A few years prior to this, Henderson had built six iron passenger clippers, Dunedin, Canterbury, Invercargill, Auckland, Nelson and Wellington, all between 1245 and 1250 tons. The Dunedin took the first shipment of frozen mutton from New Zealand in ISB4, thus laying the foundation of a trade that has grown to huge proportions and now employs many of the largest meat-carrying ships in the world. The Oaniaru and Timaru, 1306 tons,