A GOOD OLD SHIP.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19867, 15 June 1927, Page 7

A GOOD OLD SHIP.

The old Mararoa has been withdrawn from the ferry service between Lyttelton and Wellington, and the travelling public will give a sigh of relief. But her passing severs a very interesting link with the days when she was quite the fastest thing in “ocean greyhounds’ ’ in the Pacific. It is forty-two years since the Mararoa was launched. She belongs to a generation of which the old Rotomahana and Tarawera were aristocrats. She is on? of the few remaining vessels on which it is possible to see those old' candle lamps that swing in any direction as the ship rolls. She is fragrant with old memories of the comparatively early days of New Zealand, and yet she is such a beautiful model of a ship that, with her single screw, she can still show a clean pair of heels to many twin-screw vessels. But old age brings decrepitude, and old ships have to be scrapped. Regret at the superannuation of these old servants of the travelling public is tempered by the reflection that an amazingly large number of the Union Steamship Company’s fleet have survived the perils of the deep to find a safe resting place as hulks, or in the hands of ship breakers. For in the days when the Mararoa was launched, it must be re- ■ membered, a sea voyage had far more hazards than it has to-day. —ChristI church Star.