THREE FAMOUS LINERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19321, 7 May 1926, Page 9

THREE FAMOUS LINERS.

END OF A SEA CHAPTER. "JAPAN" TO BE DISMANTLED. [from our own correspondent.] Vancouver; April v. Bv the sale o? the steamer Empress of Japan to a Pacific Coast American firm, who will dismantle her, the last has been heard of three famous liners. The other two were the Empress of India and the Empress of China.' They arrived in Vancouver in 1891, and at once set the record for the trans-Pacific run, making passages between Vancouver and Yokohama up to 18.5 knots, by the Empress of Japan, which record stood for twenty years. The first to go was the Empress of China. Carried out of her course by an abnormal current off the Japanese coast, she ran ashore. For many weeks she remained on the beach, but was eventually floated and taken to Hong Kong, where she was sold and broken up. Her officers were exonerated at the court of inquiry. When the Great War broke out t.h* Empress of India left the Pacific, being purchased by an Indian prince, re-named the Loyalty, and presented to the India Government as a hospital ship. She carried wounded between India and Mesopotamia-, became the yacht of her princely purchaser after the Armistice and was in due time scrapped, after being sold to Babu interests and becoming so neglected that she rusted herself into uselessness. Thus, of the three beautiful sisters that wore admired by countless thousands in the Orient and "the West, one perished in her waywardness, the other met the end of most princely favourites. The third has lived to a ripe" old ago and has had a spotless l'ecord. From 1891, when she won the speed record of the Pacific, until she was laid up through being-too small for the traffic, the "Japan," as she was known, had but one slip, when she touched a rock some years ago in Esquimault Harbour, near Victoria, British Columbia. Handsome and jaunty in appearance, with raking masts and clipper bows, she sliced the waters of the Pacific, the' China Sea, the Japan Sea, through gale and typhoon. She had six 'masters—Captains Lee, Pybus, Beetham, Davison, Hopcra'ft and Lovegrove. The Japan took a hand in the Boxer rebellion and the Russo-Japanese war and came through unscathed. During the first 18 months of the Great War, fitted as a cruiser, she patrolled the Persian Gulf and Sea, but she had no adventures. She was never called from her tracks in the Orient and Pacific waters to help another ship in distress. Her withdrawal, with engines and hull, as good as when she was" launched, but too expensive for modern conditions, closes an interesting chapter of Pacific commerce.