THE SHIP RECALLED

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 71, 24 March 1934, Page 23

THE SHIP RECALLED

I .was,.'greatly interested' in your article last week dealing ■'■ with the* old Taranaki (writes R. J. Pope).. It-had a special ;interest for-me because in the year 1872 I made a round trip in her with my father, from Dunedin to Auckland and back, calling atv Lyttelton, "Wellington, Nelson, and New Plymouth. As I was just seven years old at the time, only a few facts concerning the trip remain in my memory. One thing, however,' I distinctly remember, I remember lying in my bunk; and wondering what the: hundreds Of little round holes, {about the size of pinheads, that covered the pale green walls of thecabin, were for. I pointed them out to my father, and asked him about them. He told me that the ship we were on had once been lying beneath the sea for a long time, and that all those holes had been bored by little seaworms while she was at the bottom. . . .

Captain Wheeler, so long and favourably known in New Zealand waters, especially as master of the old U.S.S. Co.'s Wakatipu, was skipper of the Taranaki at the time I travelled on her, this being, of course, years before the days of the Union Company.

I can recall seeing what was then considered a very large steamer, the Claude Hamilton, in Wellington Harbour, and as all the ships were bedecked with flags and a regatta (I was told it was a regatta) was being held, it fixes the date pretty conclusively as January 22 (Anniversary Day).

One other thing I remember was landing in a surf-boat at New Ply-, mouth, and being carried ashore by a Maori, my first personal acquaintance with the Native race.