“SHIP WITH NINE LIVES”

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 313, 2 December 1933, Page 10

“SHIP WITH NINE LIVES”

It has been said of the steamer Triumph, which went ashore at Tiri island (Auckland) 50 years ago, that she was “a ship with nine lives.” A lew months before she struck the rocks at Tiri —an accident that happened because her master bad fallen asleep on the bridge—she was ashore tor eleven days in the Yangtse-kiang. She was sold by auction as she lay on tlie rocks at Tiri, but was later refloated and was repaired in the old Auckland dock. On January 29, 1885, the steamer was flagship for the Anniversary Regatta. A trial trip that she made in the Hauraki Gulf after repairs had been completed was marred by. a fatal accident, the wife of one of the labourers who had assisted in the repairs being killed when she fell into the chain locker. For three years after lier Tiri accident the steamer was engaged in the intercolonial trade, once stranding at the Bluff and being refloated without damage. Sold to English owners again, she went down in the Tyne with a cargo of coal on board. This accident was soon followed by a similar one, the ship, when loaded with railway iron, sinking in the Clyde. Once again she was refloated, but she ran ashore on the Norwegian coast. Although abandoned in a sinking condition, she was eventually got off the rocks and repaired. Renamed the Gladitano and flying the Spanish Hag, the ship experienced further trouble when she sank at her anchorage at a port in Florida. ' Once more-she was raised, and when purchased by the Matson Navigation Company and renamed Hilonian she was rebuilt for the passenger service between San Francisco and Honolulu. Converted to an oil-burner, she hid her years well, and for eight years she ran without further accident. When the war was almost over, the ship which had left the ways as the Triumph nearly half a century earlier was sent to her last resting-place in the Mediterranean by a German torpedo. At the time she took her final plunge the steamer was carrying troops, so that it can he said that, despite her strange and many serious troubles, she eventually met an honourable end.