OFF THE HEADS

Evening Star, Issue 20316, 26 October 1929, Page 20

OFF THE HEADS

HUGE WHALING SHIP ARRIVES BASE PROPOSED IN LOWER HARBOUR FIVE CHASERS ACCOMPANY SOUTHERN PRINCESS. By a little over an hour, the huge .vhaiing , factory ship, Southern Princess, missed the high tide this morning off Taiaroa Head, and was forced to anchor off the harbour entrance. Port Chalmers was the first port of call in New Zealand for the Southern Princess, the latest addition to the growing fleet of mammoth factory ships operating in the Ross Sea, the Antarctic whaling field, and a dependency under New Zealand's control. Owned by a Norwegian company, the Southern Princess was reconstructed in England foi whaling operations. When the signalman at the Heads sighted the Southern Princess off the coast shortly after 9 o’clock this morning, he also picked up the five chasers. That was the first information which was obtained of the exact strength of the chasing fleet which will keep the mother ship’s factory plant busy in the ice-bound waters of the Ross Sea. Before her conversion into a factory ship the Southern Princess was known as the San Patricio, an oil anker built at their Newcastle yards by the Armstrong, Whitworth Co. for the Eagle Oil Company. Th ex-tanker is 630 ft long, wit i a beam of 66Jft. Her tonnage is 11,877 tons gross. In length she is 3ft longer than the C.,A. Larsen and the same measurement as the Rang!tiki. , When the Southern Princess was remodelled, Dunedin was marked on her stern as bet port of registry. It is expected that the company operating the factory ship and chasers will make its base in the Lower Harbour, where the chasers will be tied up and reequipped between the whaling seasons. At present the Rosshavet Co., which operates' the C. A. Larsen and Sir James Clark Ross, has its base in Paterson’s InW, Stewart Island, where a Norwegian colony is springing up. The Southern Princess has apparently an exceptio„ally_ heavy draught The tug Dunedin arrived in the bay shortly after mid-day to tow the big ship in, but no risks were being taken. As high tide will not be till after 10 o’clock to-night, the Southern Princess will probably not be berthed at Port Chalmers till the flow tide tomorrow morning. Her berthing was fixed for 10 a.m. to-day, _ but there were no signs of even trie chasers coming into 1 the channel at 12.30. Before her departure for the Ross Sea, the ship will take on supplies of fresh water and produce and provisions, It is expected that the watering of the ship and the chasers will take at least two days. Applications were invited by the agents for the vessel (Messrs John Ednond, Ltd ) for thirty men to work on he factory ship, and this morning more than double the requited number formed a queue outside the agents’ offices. New Zealanders who have made passages to the whaling grounds in the Larsen and the Sir James Clark Ross have found the work lucrative, the men paying off with cheques ranging from £9O to £lls during the past throe seasons. In the Rosshavet ships the New Zealanders are usually engaged on trimming and loading coal for the chasers The Southern Princess will be the last of the whah'rg expeditions to leave for the Antarctic this season. A whaling boom is being experienced. The C A. Larsen and Sir James Clark Ross will probably be through the iceoach i»-to the Ross Sea by row, while the Knsrnos, another new ship, left Wellington recently for the southern seas. Two factory ships, one being the Neilsen T. Alonso, have already left Hobart to operate to the westward.