UNION COMPANY'S FLEET

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 23 September 1907, Page 2

UNION COMPANY'S FLEET

IMPORTANT ADDITIONS. Per Press Association. Dunedin, Saturday Night. It has been finally decided that the steamer which is building for the Union Company for the South Sea Islands' trade is to be named the "Tofua." She is being built at Denny's yard, Dumbarton, and her principal measurements will be 350 feet by 40 feet by 30 feet. Her gross tonnage will be 4200, and she will have engine power capable of developing 14 knots. Accommodation for 100 first-class passengers and fifty se-cond-class will be provided. Delivery by the builders will be given early nest year, and the vessel will arrive here in good time for the next Islands passenger season. It has also been decided to give the name "Waitemata" to a large cargo steamer which is in the course of construction for the Company by William Hamilton, of Port Glasgow. ' This vessel's principal dimensions arc 415 feet by 54 feet by 30% feet. She is designed to carry 8500 tons dead weight on a draught of 24 feet 3 inches, and a speed of 10i/, knots. Delivery is to be givm in March. The Union Company's new turbine steamer Jfaori, built for the WellingtonLyttclton ferry service; will have a speed of not less than 21 knots per hour (says the New Zealand Times). This rate, if maintained throughout, would enable the vessel to make the passage from Wellington to Lyttelton, or vi«e versa, in eight hours and a-half, but she will hardly be forced constantly to full speed, and so a passage of nine hours m favorable weather to ten hours under less propitious conditions may ordinarily be looked for. The accommodation on the new boat will be superior to anything hitherto seen even in the Union Company's boats, which have no equal in this respect in any coastal steamers to be seen on the coasts of Britain nr I the European Continent. J