CARGO FROM EAST INDIES

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28260, 24 April 1957, Page 14

CARGO FROM EAST INDIES

Roggeveen Due' At Lyttelton Rubber, sisal, tea and pineapple will be unloaded at Lyttelton from the 4037-ton Roggeveen which is due at Lyttelton on Friday. She is the second Dutch vessel to call at Lyttelton since the resumption of a six-weekly shipping service between New Zealand ports, Malaya and Indonesia, by the Dutch Royal Interocean Lines. Like the Van Neck, which called last month, the Roggeveen is chartered from the Royal Packet Navigation Company (K.PM.), which ran the service for four years from its inception in 1938. The Roggeveen has 220,000 cubic feet of cargo space, compared with the Van Neck’s 167,000, and carries 12 passengers—the smaller ship carries only two. Both the Roggeveen, completed in Holland in 1953, and the Van Neck, are built on similar and rather unusual lines. Three of their four holds are forward of the superstructure and engines. Chinese Crew The crew of the Roggeveen consists of 11 Dutch officers and 52 Hong Kong Chinese. Her captain is Captain W. Vader, who served during the war as a navigator with the Royal Netherlands* Air Force and fell prisoner to the Japanese. He was captured in 1942 just before the capitulation in Java, Indonesia, and was sent to a camp at Macassar in the Celebes Islands. As well as cargo, the Roggeveen brings gifts. The Mayor of Christchurch (Mr R. M. Macfarlane, M.P.) w:ll, With the Mayors of Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin, receive from the company a hand-worked silver model of a Chinese junk. The presentation to the Mayor on behalf of the city will be made by the line’s manager for Australia and New Zealand (Mr A. van Bochove).