NEW VESSEL

Evening Star, Issue 22367, 17 June 1936, Page 3

NEW VESSEL

DOMINION TRADE A NEW ARAWA One of the best-known ships on the London run, the Shaw, Savill, and Albion Company’s lonic, will be withdrawn from service next March - and replaced by the 14,000-ton vessel Arawa, which was formerly engaged in the Australian trade as the Esperanto Bay. the Arawa has been extensively remodelled to meet the requirements of the New Zealand service, and her carrying capacity has been limited to 320, whereas on her former run she carried over 600. She is a modern vessel in every particular, and the accommodation is commodious. She' has large public rooms, and her diningroom will accommodate all the passengers at one sitting. There is a special playroom for children, and numerous other alterations have been made that should make the Arawa the most comfortable of liners. The Arawa will make her first trip from New Zealand in March, arriving jit Sfcutlianiipton on May 2, in time for the Coronation ceremonies. An oil-burning twin-screw vessel of 14,176 tons gross register, she was one of the five well-known Bay liners built for the Commonwealth of Australia 14 years ago, and she has a service speed of 15 knots. She is the third ship engaged in the New Zealand trade to bear the name Arawa. The first Arawa was built in 1883, and she was a sister-ship of the first Tainui, another historic name in our shipping trade. Both were remarkably handsome ships with twin funnels, clipper hows, and a large spread of canvas that gave them a good turn of speed. After some years in the New- Zealand-London trade, and in the San Francisco run, she, together with the Tainui, was chartered by the Spanish Government to carry troops to the Philippine Islands and Cuba,, when those colonies were in open revolt in 1896. After the end of the Sponish-AmerJenii War, the two ships, which had in the meantime been named the Colon and the Covodogna, resumed their old names, but she changed hands and names several times in Ihter years, and was finally sunk by a German torpedo in the Great War, when she w-as in Italian hands. The second Arawa, which was built on the Tyne in 1007, was a twin-scrcw steamer of just under 10,000 tons. Attentive outbreak of the Great War, she was converted into a transport and was one of the 10 vessels that carried the Main Body of the N.Z.E.F. to Egypt in 1914. She remained in the New Zealand trade after the war. and only eight years ago she was sold to_ German owners and renamed the Ivouigstcin.