“VIA THE CAPE”

Hokitika Guardian, 13 January 1932, Page 8

“VIA THE CAPE”

OPAWA FROM LIVERPOOL, CALL AT DAKAR. PORT BECOMES IMPORTANT. AUCKLAND, January 10. At Dakar, a French port/ British ships refuel with Russian oil out of Italian tankers. The New Zealand Shipping Company's motor ship Opawa, which arrived at Auckland from Liverpool last week to discharge at the Queen’s wharf, called there for hunkers on December 7, hut her officers did not see the town, that lm.s recently become an important port of call for New Zealand ships, as they arrived after dark and sailed again with full oil tanks three hours later. The Opawa came “the old way round,” via the Cape of Good Hope. Although she is a new ship and fast she has touchWcl 17 knots — it was a long, monotonous voyage, Dakar being the only port at which she called after leaving Liverpool on November 28. The Indian Ocean was just as void of ships as when Kipling wrote: “Take one stretch, three weeks and odd. by one road ye steer— Frae Cape Town east to Wellington—ye need an engineer. Fail there, ye've time to weld your shaft, ay, eat it, ere ye’re spoke: Or make Kerguelen under sail—three jiggers burned wi' smoke.”

Not so very long ago, it was a busy route, when the old clippers ran their Easting down, logging their steady 15 and 16 knots before the brave westerly gale. But now few ships use those waters. Occasionally one of the regular lines sends a ship out that way in ballast to load on the New Zealand coast, or a tramp with basic slag from Ant- ! worp and plenty of time to spare, takes J the old road to avoid paying canal dues. No ship was'sighted by the Opawa. no more broken-down steamers asking to be towed. Last time the Opawa was here, having come via tli’e Panama Canal, she brought into port the steamer City of Kimberley, disabled h v the breaking of her tail shaft. The salvage money for that little job has not yet I been paid, by the way, and all hands are looking forward to the spending of their shares of the reward. Dakar has recently become a frequent port of call for shins Homeward bound from Now Zealand and Australia. Owing to fluctuations in rates of exchange, tile cost of sending a vessel through the Panama Canal is heavy, and the old Cape Horn route is more used now than it has been for many years past, the ships refuelling at, Dakar instead of at Colon. Although if is the capital of French Senegal. Dakar is no more than the usual West African port—an open roadstead, a shallow inner harbour protected by a breakwater, and a town full of negroes and bad smells.

The Opawa was drawing too much water to enter the port and had to refuel from lighters in the roadstead, hut- the inner harbour is being dredge ( ] out and an oil wharf erected there. The men of the Opawa, however, know the West Coast of Africa too well to regret greatly tha -shortness of their stay at Dakar.