CONTRAST IN TRAVEL

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 112, 4 February 1939, Page 10

CONTRAST IN TRAVEL

Old Seaman Recalls Days Of Sail VISITOR IN ORONSAY Dominion Special Service. AUCKLAND, February 3. The sight of the German training barque Kommodore Johnsen alongside King’s Wharf quickened the pulse of an old sailor, Commander P. E. Lyne, of London, when lie arrived at Auckland in the course of a holiday cruise on board the Oronsay today. Peering at the barque through a telescope which has accompanied him on many a voyage, he said one saw all too few sailing ships nowadays, but the excitement of seeing one was never lost to au old salt. Commander Lyne is one of the few seamen left holding the certificate of a master of a sailing ship. He was ag apprentice on the Shaw, SaviU and Albion ship Blenheim when lie made his only other visit to Auckland, in 1889. During the ship’s brief stay in port he hopes to arrange a flight to Rotorua and the surrounding districts. “The last time I was here,” he said, . “it took me 72 days to make the voyage and it took me 144 days to go Home. On this cruise we have not yet been out from London six weeks, yet we have called at many ports on a scattered course. I love the sea, and though I have been retired for gome years I like to get back to it.” After his training on sailing ships, Commander Lyne entered the mercantile marine service and was 20 years in command of ships owned by the British-India Steam Navigation Company, plying mostly to the East. In the Great War he had command of a ship requisitioned as a man-of-war and was stationed at Gibraltar and also Queenstown, Ireland.