SHIPPING INTELLIGENCE. PORT OF OAMARU.

North Otago Times, Volume VII, Issue 159, 30 November 1866, Page 2

SHIPPING INTELLIGENCE. PORT OF OAMARU.

INWARDS. November 29. - Wainui, s.s., Crone, from Dunedin. Traill, Roxby and Co., Agents. November 29. - Matilda Hayes, Bowers, from Dunedin, Henry France, Agent.

OUTWARDS. NovjM jer29.— Wttinui, s.s., Crone, for the North. Trail], Koxby and Co., Agents. November 29.— Matilday Hayes, Bowers, for Shag Point. Henry France, Agont.

IMPORTS. Per Wainui, from Dunedin.— Free and duty paid : 1 parcel, 1 weighing machine, Cargills and M'Lean ; 1 trunk effects, 1 portmanteau, Kussoll ; 1 case, Hood and Shennnn ; 5 bis corn sacks, 2 crates bottles, 1 cs acid, 2 pels Turkey stones, Traill, Roxby and Co ; 1 oven, Calcutt and Menlove ; 1 pkg baskets, Dalgety, Rattray and Co ; 15 bags sugar, 40 do flour, 2 chests and 6 boxes tea, 9 bxs and 1 cs soap, 5 bxs candles, 1 bag barley, 2 cs cider, 2 do old torn, 2 do vinegar, 2 do syrup, 2 do ale, Gibbs ; 3 cs brandy, 1 d" confectionery, 2 do geneva, 1 box maizena, 6 do tea, 2 tins oils, Morton ; 1 bdl lamps, 2 cs do, J do ironware, 1 cs glass, Town Council ; 10 cs geneva, 1 bdl bedding, 1 ck and 3 bxs effects, 1 table, 1 washingstand, Booth Brothers. Per Matilda Hayes, from Dunodin,— 84 standards, 5 chests tea, 10 J-do do, 2 cs salad oil, 40 drums oil. Cargills and M'Le-in ; 58 bdls laths, 5000ft timber, Lemon ; 3 bdls woolpacks, 10 pkgs sundries, Holmes.

EXPORTS. Per Wainui, for Lyttelfcon. — 10 tons stone, Traill, Roxby and Co.

In the Dunedin papers the ship Melita is advertised to load wool at Oamaru ; in the Timaru journal she is announced to load at that place. The s.s. Wainui from Dunedin, came into port at a late hour on Wednesday evening. The boats began to discharge her cargo at midnight. The Geelong, fi om Dunedin, will arrive in port at an early hour this morning. The Wainui sailed north at 1 p.m. yestoiday. The s.s. Kcera has been abandoned by her owners, and sold for the small sum of £110. She was wrecked at the Buller River. By the arrival of the cutter Isabella, from the Fijis, we have later news from those islands. The war was ■till raging amongst the natives, A New Zealand vessel (formeily belonging to Auckland) and named Kate, had been committing acts of piracy at the Islands ; the crow had seized the captain and a passenger, tied their arms behind them and threw them overboard into the suif near an uninhabited island, on which they w ere fortunately cast ashore and afterwards rescued by a passing vessel. Nothing more was seen of the Kate, the crew having made off with her, and taking with them about £1500 belonging to the passenger. The persons on board were a man named Johnson, who came from I asmania, (the ringleader), a boy called Billy (who left here in the schooner Success), a Kanaka named Adam Clark, and a man who had been left at one of the islands by a whaler ; there was also on board a woman named Marshall (alias Mrs Johnson) a native of Bath, Somersetshire, England, who for some time past has been living at the island. It is doubtful whether the Kate proceeded to New Zealand, Australia, or South America, but we hope boon to hear of her capture. —New Zealand Herald, Nov. 17th. The s.s. Rakaia arrived at Wellington from Panama at 3.15 p.m., on November 23, bringing later intelligence from Europe and America, and a laige number of passengers for New Zealand and Australia. Her dates aie :— England, October 2; Netf York, October 11; California, October 10, England, by telegraph to New York, October 7. She left Panama on Thursday morning, the 25th October, (26th Wellington time) at 6 o'clock, haviug been detained over her time in consequence of the late arrival of the Royal Mail Co'a steamer Danube on her passage from England to take up the station, and consequent time lost in preparing the Tamar for sea ; the Rakaia therefore did not receive her mails on board until 6 o'clock on the evening of the 24th, and the cargo until the following morning at 5 o'clock. JB'rom Panama here she had very pleasant weather throughout, though for the last fourteen days the wind and sea have been ahead ; this coupled with iAyin^tauet^t-fi«t^V<tli i; s'«i?afiit<;* i^iir<icec?cin'G"rcfrT;ite lateness of hor [arrival. On the 9th November, at 6 o'clock, the Rakaia passed within one mile of Pitcairn Island, and canoes came off and boarded the ship, the Governing Magistrate, Moses Young, being amongst them ; he wished Captain Wright to go on shore and settle a dispute amongst their number, but time not permitting, the Captain suggested that a statement should be diawn up by either party, aDd the first mail steamer that passed should be requested to carry such statement on, and lay it before the Governor of New Zealand or New South Wales. The feud originated from the fact that the widow of one of the Pitcairn Islanders accompanied the returning islanders from Norfolk Island, and claimed the i ight of will of her late husband for certain lands to the prejudice of the equable division of the island to the whole ; their feeling being that no frrmer cl.iim held good after the abandonment of the whole, and therefore, that an entire redistribution Bhall take place. With this exception they seomed to be very contented, and instead of quarrelling had determined to leave the matter open for arbitration by an impartial umpire. This island being quite in the route, Captain Wright made arrangements that at the time of the ship's passing a supplyof fresh vegetables and fruits should be '•eady, and the time in this instance employed in stopping as well spent in cleaning flues, &c, Prevention of Fouling of Ships' Bottoms. — Repeated endeavours have been made to hit upon a sure means of preventing the growth of seaweed and Crustacea on the bottoms of ships— which, among other effects, materially tends to retard the speed of the vessel, and which takes place with most rapidity in the waters of the warmer latitudes, ships traversing which have sometimes (as in the recent great ocean race from China) the most to gain by superiority of speed. No attempt to remedy this evil, by providing a composition which should effectually defend the ship's bottom agaiust fouling, lias, so far as we are aware, been completely successful. The Admiralty have tried and usedsevoialof those compositions ; but an infallible and complete remedy remains— or till lately remained- to be discovere-1. The discovery is believed, by many who are compot-nt to judge of siich matters, to have been made by our townsman, Mr Fiancis Cruickshnnk — well known in the world of art as a po trait painter of much sweetness nnd skill. How Mr Cruickshank's attention and ingenuity were directed to this subject, we do not know ; but it is certain that, after considerable labour and experiment, ho succeeded in preparing a coating for ships' bottoms which has stood with decided advantage the comparison with older compositions of the same kind. He applied his coating to iron plates which were immersed in the sea at the same time and under the same conditions with plates covered with the ordinary preparations ; and found that, after being for months in the water, his plates were perfectly clean, and the others more or less foul. A similar experiment was tried with a boat of some size which Mr Cruickshank purchased ; iron plates were fixed on her bottom ; .and after she had besn for seven months in the water the bottom was found covered with seaweed to the length of two inches, except on the part protected by the new composition, which was as clean as when the coating was fiist applied. Mr Cruickshank having, in conjunction with Mr Craigie Halkett, patented the coating, application was made to the Admiralty for leave to try it on some of the Government vessels. After some delay, caused by the reluctance of the authorities to experiment with any mixture that could not be shown to be superior to thobe already in use, the coating was tried on the bottom of one of the " fire-floats" in Portsmouth dockyard. Three patches of the vessel were coated with Mr Cruickshank's composition, the rest with that of Mr Hay, the Admiralty chemist. After immersion from May 4th to November 18th last year, the vessel was docked ; and while the patches where Mr Cruickshank's coating had been applied were perfoctly free from fouling, the rest of the bottom was found heavily fouled, some of the weeds being from eighteen to twenty inches long. Permission was then given by the Admiralty, which had expressed much satisfaction with the anti-fouling qualities of the composition, to try it on a sea-going iron vessel — the Tamar ; and when she was docked a few days ago, after a commission of some months, the composition was found to have stood the test even more satisfactorily, both as an anti-con osive and an anti-fouling preparation, than in the case of the "fire-float." The result of a moie crucial, and what appears to be a convincing experiment on the vi- tues of the new coating, became known last week. The iion vessel Premier, of Dundee, was coated — early in May, 1865, while in the graving dock of Messrs Brown & Simpson, her builders — with Mr Cruicknbank's composition, on the starboard quarter. The Premier sailed to Valparaiso, and thence to Sydney, where, in July last, she was docked. In writing home to the owners, Captain White gave the following report ' of the result: -"On examination of the ship's bottom in Sydney, it was discovered to be covered with bar- i nacles of about three inches long, except a white patch under her starboard quarter, which was coated with Cruickshank'a patent composition, and which, after a cruise of eleven months, was found to be perfectly clean." The value of this test consists not merely in the length of time over which it extended, but in the establishment

of tho fact that the coating did not, as hod been apprehended, lose one iota of its efficacy by exposure in the waters of warmer latitudes. A number of experiments of minor importance, on yachts and other vessels sailing our own teas, have been made, in every case with complete success, botli positive and comparative ; and there seems now to bo good reason to believe that an anfcifouling composition of unfailing efficacy — whose hardness and closeness thoroughly set at defiance the penetrative agency of the many enemies that perniciously Attach themselves to the bottoms of ships — it at the disposal of the shipbuilding and shipowning interests. — Scotsman.