AN INDUSTRY DIES

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 122, 19 November 1932, Page 22

AN INDUSTRY DIES

BUILDING OF SHIPS

STORY OF NICCOL'S YARDS

At one time the shipbuilding yards owned by Mr. George T. Niceol, Auckland, which are to be closed owing to slackness of trade, were the largest in the Dominion, states the "New Zealand Herald." Hundreds of vessels, from cutters and yachts to cargo and passenger steamers plying in the coastal aud iintercolonial trade, have been built.by | the firm during the 90 years it has been iin existence. Many fine schooners built jin these yards are now in Australia and various parts of tho Pacific, and some of the small coastal steamers are still trading in North and South Island waters.

A -wonderful record of service with the firm is held by Mr. Arthur Willetts, who has worked in the Niceol yards for 52 years. He joined the firm when ho was 13 years of age, thus following in the footsteps of his father, the late

Mr. James Willetts, who worked in the Niecol yards before him. "It was a wonderful firm and the boats we built were known all overNAustralia and New Zealand," said Mr. Willetts to a reporter, "forty years ago we employed 30 men and were turning out four scows every year. I myself have helped to build SO large boat's. "The first boat I worked on was a large launch, 70ft in length, which was built in Auckland and was sailed to Australia. My father, I remember, built the old ferry boat Takapuna, and I helped to build the ferry boats Con-! dor, Pupuke, and Toroa, as well as all the vehicular ferry steamers now on the harbour. ; WARSHIP' S STOUT TIMBERS. "Lots of the old ships I built are j still afloat and performing good service, j but tho oldest, I think, is the scowl Tally Ho, which I built about 38 years] ago out of the timbers of the old man-o'-war Wolverine. That warship, which used to be stationed in New Zealand waters in the old days, was one of tho old 'wooden walls' of England. When her dayj were ended I helped to break her up in Stanley Bay. We used her timbers, which were wonderfully sound, to build scows and schooners, and her sails were cut down to suit smaller vessels. The Tally Ho is still afloat, bringing sand to Auckland from the islands in the gulf, and her timbers, I am told, are as sound as the day I built her."

Among the old vessels built in the Niceol yards for the intercolonial trade were the barques Ernpreza, Alcestis, Neptune, Woosong, Vision, and the ship Eepublic, of 1400 tons. When Mr. Willetts was a lad the firm was building schooners for the Island trade. He himself has voyaged through the Pacific several times purchasing vessels for his firm. Usually they were schooners and barques that had been stranded on coral reefs and they were towed to Auckland and made new. Among the steamers built by Mr. Willetts wero the Northern Company's Omana and the new motor-vessel Atua, the Wairua, and the Euawai, both on the Northern Wairoa River, and the Northern Company's motor vessels. A KEVOLUTIONAKY CHANGE. Mr. Willetts referred to the old timber-frame vessels, made of pohutukawa frames, which later were displaced by the diagonal-planking method of construction. The timber frames, he said, were chopped out of solid pohuf.ukawa trees, which accounted, in some part, for" the denudation <jf the trees along the waterfront. The coming of the internal -combustion engine, however, had revolutionised the kind of work that use! to be done in the Auckland yards. Sail had practically disappeared, and even the scows were fullpowered vessels, travelling at a speed of eight to ten knots.

Speed was not always with the en-gine-propelled vessel, however, said Mr. Willetts. A three-masted scow he had built, the Zingara, which was still afloat, made fast trips to Australia, and another of his three-masted scows, tho Karori, which used to trade to Hokianga, could sail at 15 to 16 knots and was accustomed to make two trips for every one trip made by another vessel. Kauri was the timber favoured for practically all the vessels built in the Niceol yards, said Mr. Willetts. It was, in his opinion, the best timber for ships to be found in the world. Auck-land-built ships were constructed specially to withstand the buffeting they were liable to receive on the river-bars. The kauri hulls would strike the bar and spring back, whereas iron vessels, which had little resiliency, were liable to injury in this way.