CHEQUERED CAREER

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17872, 31 August 1932, Page 5

CHEQUERED CAREER

OLD BARQUE FELICITAS VESSEL’S INGLORIOUS END Stripped of all her past array of stately masts and billowing canvas, a stately sailing ship o_f the early ’eighties and ’nineties, then known as the barque Felicitus, is about to pass into the limbo of forgotten things in Otago Harbor. Shp ended her days of service nearly 30 years ago. She was built in 1874. It is known among those who have been associated with shipping at the principal Dominion ports for the past 40 years or so that the Felicitas went ashore near Suva in the early part of the present century. She was subsequently refloated and towed to Auckland, where she wap repaired, and it is believed that the ship subsequently sailed from Auckland to Newcastle. At any rate, reliable records show that the Felicitas loaded a cargo of coal at Newcastle some time in 1903. She sailed from the New South Wales port for South America.; but did not reach her destination, as she put in to Wellington in a leaking condition. The vessel was anchored off Kaiwnrra for about two years, and was then purchased by the Union Company. The Felicitas was dismantled at Wellington toward the end of 1906, and was then towed to Port Chalmers by the Union Company’s old cargo steamer Hawea, which arrived at the Otago port with the dismantled barque on the evening of December 31. 1905. The Felicitas was stripped of surplus gear and was used as a coal hulk in the harbor up to a. few months ago, serving her purpose well for nearly 27 years. A start was made some months ago to strip the Felicitas as sho lay at the dock-liead at Port Chalmers by removing the timbers to within a- few feet of the water line. The work, which is still in pro-