MOTOR-SHIP OPAWA

Taranaki Daily News, 26 August 1931, Page 10

MOTOR-SHIP OPAWA

VOYAGE VIA CAPE HORN, ■ ADVANTAGES of route. The New Zealand Shipping Company’s new motor-ship Opawa, which left Wellington for London last week, is to proceed to England via Cape Horn instead of the usual route through the Panama Canal. The vessel’s oil fuel bunkers will be replenished at Dakar, West Africa. This voyage of the Opawa is of considerable interest, because she is _ the first motor-ship to be dispatched from New Zealand to England via Cape Horn. Since the war that route has only .been taken bv coal-burning steamers, which have to make a call at Montevideo or Teneriffe with fruit from New Zealand, and they are able to obtain supplies ot coal fuel at their discharging ports. About seven or eight steamers are dispatched from New Zealand every year with fruit for South American ports. The Opawa’s only port of call be Dakar, because her cargo of New Zealand produce ifl all for discharge at London, Avon mouth, Liverpool and Glasgow. The fuel of motor-ships and oil-burning steamers from New Zealand to England is always replenished at Panama or at the West Indian ports of Curacao or Caraca Bay. Now that arrangements have been made for Dakar to be an oil-fuelling station tor New Zealand vessels, it is possible that more motor-ships will be dispatched to England via the Cape Horn route. They will thus avoid the expensed incurred by vessels using the Pana 1 ' a Canal, where the dues are stated to be very heavy. I The Cape Horn route, with Dakar as a port of call, is only about 500 miles 1 longer than the Panama route. ,