DOWN THE SCALE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 2, 2 July 1926, Page 9

DOWN THE SCALE

EMERGENCY SHIP'S LAST JOB

FENDER FOR DOCKING "VESSELS.

(By Telegraph.) (Special to the "Evening Post") DUNEDIN, This Day.

The steamer Broxton has been sunk at the dock fairway, and her experiences have reached finality. A production of war exigency, the Broxton has had a varied career during the few years of her existence. She was built in America to. carry food to the Allies when the submarines threatened to cut off their supplies. Being an emergency job, she was not constructed with the facilities for dispatch which are regarded as indispensable in a modern trader, and after the war she was soon found unprofitable. A syndicate bought her at Lyttelton as a speculation, and sold her to the Union Company, which had her dismantled and the machinery removed at Port Chalmers. Eeduced to the 'status of a "sheer hulk," she was not then easily disposed of; the heavy timbering of her internal structure rendered her unsuitable for even a coal hulk. She was thrown on the scrap heap of rotting old hulks down the harbour. A few clays later a very high tide floated her out of that graveyard of buried sea romances, and she drifted one night allover the lower harbour. Next day she was captured by a tug and returned to Carey Bay, a, wire hawser being put out to hold her. She remained there until a clay bed was ready for her alongside the fairway to the new dock, where she was sunk on Wednesday afternoon in 17ft of water., The salvage tug Dunedin pumped in water to sink her, and she now rests upright to serve as a fender for steadying ships about to enter or leave the dock.