S.S. WAVERLEY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3814, 5 July 1928, Page 2

S.S. WAVERLEY.

HER FINAL VOYAGE,

BEACHED AT BLENHEIM.

It’s hard to see the old-timers go without a tear. She was a great bar ship, and answered her helm lightly in many a ticklish situation did the old Waverley, which has been pushing her prow into big seas round this coast for the past 45 years. She knew the coast well; she was built and later extended v . upon it; and now her 93-ton hull is about to be beached upon it. Captain W. Brigden, her last skipper, stood reflectively upon her skeleton shell.. “She was a great old box to he at sea with in heavy weather. Once she used to carry passengers,” and the master smiled sardonically at the picture his old charge presented as she lay beside a Wellington wharf a short time ago. “She was built for river / port trade, and has sailed chiefly - , between Wellington, the West Coast ports, Foxton, and Patea.”

The Waverley made her first and last trading run between Patea and W T ellington, and in disposing of a German mine outside the Patea Heads she did the little piece of war work which differed from the dull routine. In her last days she was a forlorn picture as the ship breakers picked her bones white. Grimly humorous read the legend on the notice board: “S.S. Waferlev sails for London, at 7.45: tonight,”—but it is across the straits her last trip was*to be made. ’Her skeleton will.be beached to form part of the Blenheim harbour works.