FOR THE EAST

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 6, 6 July 1935, Page 26

FOR THE EAST

The coastal steamer Ahuriri, one of the two small ships recently sold m Auckland to be broken up and sent as scrap iron to Japan, is one of the earliest iron products of the Wellington shipbuilders' art. She was built here in 1887, and her dimensions are: Length, 88.5 ft; breadth, 16ft; draught, 7.4 ft. She is propelled by a 15 h.p. engine. Af^gr being used in the coastal trade for a considerable period she was converted into a trawler, and was used for fishing until she was laid up some years ago.

The second vessel, the Kurnalpi, was built at Christiania, Norway, in 1903, and her former name was Heina. After being owned by the Melbourne Steamship Company and running for some years in the Australian coastal trade, she came to New Zealand, having been bought to trade from Auckland to northern and west coast ports of the North Island.

She reached Auckland from Sydney in January, 1926, but her sea-going career in New Zealand waters lasted only five months. She made a couple of trips to northern ports and one to the South Island. Then she was ordered to be sold, by public tender.

The vessel never went to sea again, and after lying idle at Auckland for twelve months she was sold in July, 1927, to shipbreakers, who stripped Ker of all her machinery and fittings of value before her hull was taken the following year to Ponui Island, Hauraki Gulf, where it has been used as a breakwater ever since. The hull will be towed to Auckland shortly to be broken up.