HER LAST VOYAGE

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 345, 28 January 1937, Page 3

HER LAST VOYAGE

R.M.S. MAKURA Veteran Liner Leaves For China. Sold at the end of last year to Chinese 'buyers, the veteran liner Makura, well known to thousands of travellers across the Pacific and the Tasman since the opening years of the century, left Wellington at 8 o’clock yesterday to end her career in China seas, her funnel painted black, and manned by a Chinese crew.

Her eventual destination is Shanghai, but it is uncertain what her movements will be after she leaves Sydney, which is her first port of call after leaving Wellington, owing to the crisis in Japan. Interviewed by a “Post” reporter recently, her master, Captain Young, said that in the absence of instructions front the ship’s new owners lie was unable to say exactly where she would be going. The Makura, which was specially built for the Sydney-Auckland-Vancouver service in 1908 by Alexander Stephen and Sons, of Glasgow, took up her running in November of that year, and maintained it almost without a break for more than 16 years. The Makura and the Niagara provided almost the only regular mail and passenger communication with England throughout the Great War. The Makura made about 100 voyages from Sydney to Vancouver, via Auckland, and continued in the service until 1925, when she was replaced by the Aorangi, and entered the San Francisco service, where she has remained ever since. In her 28 years’ service with the company the Makura steamed more than 2,300,000 miles across the Pacific.