STEAMER SOLI) FOR SCRAP

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21089, 15 July 1938, Page 9

STEAMER SOLI) FOR SCRAP

EDINA’S VARIED CAREER OLDEST PASSENGER SHIP IN WORLD United Press Association—By Electric Telegranb—Copyright (Received July 14, 6.30 p.m.) MELBOURNE, July 14. The Edina, the oldest passenger steamer in the world, has been sold o a Victorian and will be broken up for scrap metal. 'The Edina, which was known as “The old Lady of Port Phillip Bay,” was launched on the Clyde in 1854. She served in the Crimean War as a storeship and carried Florence Nightingale as a passenger. She also ran the blockade from Texas during the American Civil War and she carried miners from Melbourne across the Tasman at the time of the Otago gold rush. Afterwards she was bought by the Warrnambool Steam Packet Co., and later by Howard Smith, Ltd., her last owners. For Howard Smith she traded up the Australian coast, and, at the age of twenty-six years, she entered the Melbourne-Portarlington-Geelong service. She was known to many thousands —possibly millions — of travellers and holiday-makers. Sank Three Vessels The Edina was Involved In several mishaps. In 1898 she sank the Manawatu off Williamstown. The next year she ran Into the Excelsior, off Point Cooke and sank her, too. In 1917 she rammed and sank a Harbour Trust motor-launch, and In 1928 she rammed and almost cut in half the steam tug Hovel!, which sank in three minutes. Her figurehead, “Edina, Fair Maid of Judea,” was shattered when the Dandenong struck the Edina in a gale off Warrnambool many years ago. She has been repaired and refitted so often that very little of the original vessel remains, and her total mileage must be many times round the globe. Captain A. Moxey, her commander for more than sixteen years, will be given the command of another of the company’s vessels. Berths will be found in other ships for ts many as possible of the Edina’s complement of three officers and nine men.