VETERAN ENGINEER.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 237, 4 September 1928, Page 5

VETERAN ENGINEER.

DEATH AT AUCKLAND. Per Press Association. AUCKLAND. Sept. 1. The career of Mr "William Laird, formerly superintending engineer to the Northern Steamship Company, whose death occurred yesterday at the age of 88 years, extended from the time when the navies of the world consisted wholly of wooden warships. He was born in 1840 at Dundee, Scotland. Mr Laird was taken by his parents to America in his infancy, and remained there until manhood. Ho served his apprenticeship as an engineer to the firm of C. E. Delameker and Company, of New York, where he was employed when the war of secession broke out between the Northern and Southern States. It was at the Delameker works that tho famous iron-plated ship Monitor was built for the Northern Navy, and Mr Laird was one of those employed in her construction. Tho advent of Mr Laird to New Zealand had an element of romance. His mother had been left a widow. Ono day her attention was called to an advertisement in the New York Herald inquiring for heirs to Robort Fyffe, who was drowned off Cape Campbell, and who "'had left a sheep run in the Nelson district. Mrs Laird’s maiden name was Fyffe, and she was able to establish relationship as tho sister of the deceased runholder. She thus inherited £IB,OOO. With her family she arrived at Wellington at tho end of 1862, .and Mr W. Laird went to Kaikoura and took charge of her property, which was eventually sold. Then Mr Laird entered tho service of tho New Zetland Steam Navigation _ Company, a Wellington concern, as chief engineer of the Rangitara.