MORE SCRAP IRON

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18066, 18 April 1933, Page 10

MORE SCRAP IRON

BOILER FROM ONEHUNGA

EAST COAST WRECK RECALLED

A great ami miscellaneous collodion of h-rrap iron bus been made in the city since a market, for it has been found in .Japan. One piece of scrap, an old boiler, which was brought in from OneluingiL to the city, has associations with early coastal shipping and an iron foundry at Onehunga. It is reliably stated to have been the boiler of the steamer Thomas Russell, which had a, short career trading on the east coast. This vessel was built in England for the Waikato Coal and Steam Company, but three years after her arrival she was wrecked at Crete Point, in the Bay of Plenty. Her loss occurred during a gale which raged on the const on March 13, 1885. Hie salvage of the boiler and its transportation to Auckland, no mean feat in those days, followed, and it is stated chat it was drawn on a lorry by a dozen horses and tivken out and installed in the Onehunga iron works. There it was utilised in the manufacture of sheet iron. With tire sale of tlie works the boiler's usefulness terminated, and it was removed into the yard. There it lay until a party of Onehunga stalwarts, in a merry mood, rolled it out of the yard down towards the Manukau foreshore. It remained in the vicinity of the present railway station, rusting away, for about three decades. As scrap iron it lias missed better markets in the interval, and the Onehunga Borough Council was glad to quit it at S/fi a ton. It was not the council's fault that it ever came into their possession, for when the owners were called on to remove the boiler they made a present of it to tlie count il.