LINER’S LAST VOYAGE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 1 February 1939, Page 8

LINER’S LAST VOYAGE

TAINUI HOMEWARD BOUND SUBMARINE ATTACK RECALLED There was a touch of melancholy imparted to the luncheon to-day on the Shaw Savill liner Tainui, says yesterday’s “Evening Post.” Shipping and some othe" people met around her to-day as guests of the company, the occasion being a farewell to the vessel. iSl?e takes her final departure from New Zealand this week h r Southampton and London. And after? Her fate is yet to be decided. Ships are like horses in the grip they have on human interest. They become known and liked, as if they were sentiment things, as horses are. But it is curious how they fascinate, or at least interest, people whose ways are not in the sea and who, pet haps, have never travelled in a deep-water vessel. Such people, whether they have access to the waterfront, on the Thames or the Clyde, the Mersey or Southampton Water, but certainly in the ports of New Zealand, give hoe rein to fancy when they see the big ships come in and go out. Ships to or from places with enchanting names like T-Uticorin and Puget Sound, Buenos Aires and Beira, to say nothing of London or Glasgow, conjure up visions of travel and change, coming some day, some day. Ships with funnel markings of great diversities and sometimes with crews forming a fo’c’sle league of nations often visit New Zealand ports, but the ship-minded citizens who perambulate the wharves are more familiar with the regular liners, and when these depart for good, as so many have done, their loss is felt personally and keenly by many who have no direct interest in shipping. So, too, will the Tainui be missed, as one more nautical identity, familiar to the hundreds who daily make by the wharves an agreeable and picturesque day’s work in offices or shops.

It is the ships that draw, for Avhen one of them is diverted or absent from the port for a long time, these unofficial promenaders of the wharves ask. Why and W here ? The Tainui will he missed as the Corinthic, lonic, and Athenic are still missed and talked about by those who never go down to the sea in ships. THE FIRST TAINUI Now the first steamer Tainui was a vessel of singularly graceful lines and should have pleased even Ruskin when he rhapsodised over the wonder of “the bow of a boat.” She was clipper bowed and fully rigged, four masted, and carried when required a rigspread of canvas, an 1 from the Cape of Good Hope to New Zealand she used it, too. She and her sister, the Arawa, had all the elegant lines and curves that a ship could have. Their beauty is an agreeable topic to broach at any time to those who can recall them. They represented the rather slow transition of shipowners ’ideas from sail to steam.

But this ladylike first Tainui gave place t) another vessel of her own name and ov/nery, and now that Tainui is passing out of the New Zealand trade for good, yet not without regret of jpany who have an abiding interest in ships.'She has been in the New Zealand trade for thirty years, and entered it a new vessel, arriving in Wellington on Boxing Day, 1908. She was also “wounded in action,” for a German submarine attacked her, when nearing the English coast, torpedoed her, and made a great rent forward ; but she was navigated with extraordinary skill and limped into Falmouth wounded, with no lives lost. The Tainui’s days are nearly over, so far as the Shaw, Savill service is concerned, but the next vessel to captivate the interest of the ship-minded citizens will be the Dominion Monarch. She, like the original Tainui and Arawa, has two funnels, but in point of tonnage she would make five of them. Her arrival is awaited with particular interest.