NEW ISLANDS STEAMER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19891, 9 March 1928, Page 10

NEW ISLANDS STEAMER.

MAUI POMARE'S DEPARTURE

VOYAGE TO NEW ZEALAND.

A cable message reports the departure from Liverpool for Wellington of the Maui Pomare, the new motor-vessel of 950 tons, built to the order of the New Zealand Government.

The Maui Pomare has been built by the Dublin Dockyard Company, a subsidiary company of Vickers, Limited, which secured the contract out of 40 tenderers. The contract price was £55,018, and the vessel's keel was laid in November, 1926. She was successfully launched last September. The vessel is 210 ft. in length, 35ft. in breadth, and has a draught of 14ft. Sho has two Vickers-Petters oil engines, the guaranteed speed being 11£ knots. A special feature is the long insulated hold running the greater part of the length and fitted up in the most up-to-date manner for the carriage of fruit. It is understood the Maui Pomare is to bo used principally for the carriage of copra, rubber, cocoa, fruit and general merchandise between Now Zealand and Samoa and Niue Island. However, there is accommodation for the Administrator of Samoa and his staff, as well as for 30 European passengers, and also for natives travelling between the islands. There is a possibility of the vessel making regular connections between Apia and Auckland, taking in also the lower Cook Group to relieve the congestion of fruit at the outer islands. Her discharging ports in New Zealand will be Auckland, Wellington and Lyttelton. The vessel will be eminently suitable for the class of work in which sho will bo engaged and her provision marks an epoch in the development of New Zealand's trade with the outlying islands.