CABLE STEAMER IRIS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21264, 19 February 1931, Page 5

CABLE STEAMER IRIS.

OFFERED FOR SALE. INTERESTING EVENT IN HER CAREER. - , (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, February' 18. Following the placing of the cable steamer Iris on the market for sale, a num r ber of officers and members of the crew of the vessel are retiring from the service of the Pacific Cable Board. - The arrangement affects 19 permanent hands, including Captain H. R. Hughes, the purser (Mr R. Bannister), the chief engineer (Mr J. D. S. Fleming), .the cable foreman (Mr J. Bookham), and the chief jointer (Mr J. King), who have beep associated in the service of the board for the'past 28 years. The retirements are to take effect at the end of this mopth. The possibility of the Iris being sold was discussed some months ago, and it was then intimated that Imperial Communications, Ltd., intended to make Singapore the headquarters of its maintenance service. It is possible,- therefore, that when the steamer ultimately changes hands the officers and men who have not elected to tender their resignations will be offered employment there. The Iris, with her schooner bow, long overhung stern, high superstructure amidships, and grey-painted: hull, has been a familiar object on the Devonport waterfront for many years, where she lay ready at short notice tp sail to plump great depths, in search of broken cable, or to carry on.ordinary maintenance work. The most notable , exploit of the Iris was, during the Great War when Count von Luckner, the celebrated German searaider, tired of the seclusion of the prison isle of Motuihi, and after escaping by a launch and capturing the scow Moa, made his way with a few followers as far north as the lonely Kermadecs. It was the, cable steamer that was despatched in pursuit. For the occasion a gun of small calibre was mounted forward, and when it spoke off one of the outposts of the Kermadec group the German raider hauled into the wind and incontinently surrendered. Built at Port Glasgow in 1902 by D. J. Dunlop and Co., the Iris was designed for cable work. Shortly after she was launched she came to New Zealand, where her yacht-like line won general admiration along the Auckland waterfront. Except for excursions to repair the Suva-New Zealand-Australia sections of the Pacific cable, she has been continuously stationed at Auckland.