END OF SHOWBOAT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23179, 27 October 1938, Page 10

END OF SHOWBOAT

BTJENED AT BANGITOTO SHIP'S STRANGE CAREER SCHOONER AND CABARET Stripped of everything useful, a shell of what once had been the sleek American four-masted schooner Columbia, on the Honolulu run, then successively a coal hulk in the Auckland Harbour and a floating cabaret, the Showboat, as she became known, was beached at the northern end of Rangitoto Island early yesterday morning and destroyed by fire. The Auckland Harbour Board's tug Te Awhina moved away from the eastern reclamation with the Showboat in tow at 6.30 yesterday morning. When they arrived' off Jtangitoto the tug transferred the tow to two launches, and at nine o'clock the Showboat was beached and the launch crews scrambled on board to light the highly mta" mable materials with which the hull had previously been filled—dozens Of worn motor-car - tyres, innumerable lengths of useless timber and kerosene, tar and similar fuel. Then the men hurriedly left the hulk. A series of small fires quickly spread throughout the ship. Flames swept over the sides and around the two masts that had been left standing. By 11 o'clock the fire had completely gripped the Showboat. I' ragments of burning material dropped into the water and were quenched, gaps appeared in the hull and over everything hung a heavy volume of smoke. It was not until mid-afternoon that the fire was spent, for the vessel had been 6toutly built. All that remained of her was burned debris. A photograph of the Showboat in flames appears on page 8.