KAURI SHIPS

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3110, 14 June 1917, Page 6

KAURI SHIPS

A NEW ZEALAND PROPOSAL. Mr. Henry J, White, the structural engineer and architect, wiioso work is well known ail over Australasia, and who visited Wellington last week in connection with a very largo work of which more will be heard shortly, was in his years of greater leisure a keen yachtsman. Only last year, he broke up a big yysht ho had in Auckland, as he had no time for tho sport and could not find a buyer. The money tho lead from tho keel produced was also a factor. Air. White said that his yacht was 33 years old and kauri-built, and though it had not been given the attention a trading vessel would ordinarily receive (as tho yacht was too big to beach in the ordinary way and docking oharges were heavy), he found that her timbers were as 6ound as tho day they were put together. This started a vein of thought, in vhich a war-time need might be supplied. j[r. White believes that an opportunity presents itself for supplying tho tonnage needed by Now Zealand iu the Pacific Ocean at least in building four-masted schooners of kauri, either in Auckland, Dargaville, or ono of the northern ports close to the source of the kauri timber supply, on the lines of the American schooners which come down to New Zealand. Mr. Whi+e proposes a schooner about 300 ft. iu length, 50ft. in breadth, with a carrying capacity of about 3000 tons. These schooners, he explains, are run by a crew of from six to eight men, as there are no square-sails to manage, and the lowering or hoisting of tho mainsails (four in number) is managed by the aid of winches, which means that there is no going aloft. Each vessel would be fitfed with a Diesel oil engine that would mean a speed of six or seven knots in calm weather, and all tho parts oif the vessel would be standardised. "As these vessels," says irr. White, "sail (o within three noints of the wind, they could almost lv> —nn across the Pacific to time-table, taking what we have to nfl'er iu tV <vnv of woo!, iln.v, kauri-gum. etc., and bringing back the manufactured goods that v'H he badly needed in New Zealand, if tho present rate of depletion of our shipping continues. Thev would be good cargo-carriers for the Now Zea- ] land-Australian trade, and also for the | i n fnr-isl*<nd and "astern trade.

"T reckon," said Mr. White, "that such craft rould be built for between .£30,000 and £mMtl, and that at the present freight rates between America and New Zealand they would p,iv for themselves in a couple of trips. And you must remember this—that (hough the war were to end this year—which is not likelythere must necessarily be a. shortage of tonnage for four or five years to come, and those years promise to be the busiest for traffic ever known to tbo Seven Sens. Tn our knuri. we "have one of the very best timbers for ship-building, and T am sure that if facilities w»re <"'vrn (he project would turn out well. Wct" the idea taken up the first New Zealand schooner could be launched in six months', tin'?, and half ft dow>n could be tnrned out in eighteen montbp."