REMINISCENCES OF THE P.S. NEW ZEALAND.

West Coast Times, Issue 33, 19 August 1865, Page 2

REMINISCENCES OF THE P.S. NEW ZEALAND.

My acquaintance with the New Zealand dutes a long way back in the history of tho steamer, and not a few years of my own life. I may say from her cradle or cradles, up to the date of her last fatal voyage to the West Coast of Now Zealand, she was as my " fond familiar friend." When I first mado acquaintance with her she was on the stocks in tho glass-covered building yard of Messrs Tod and Macgregor, at Glasgow. Her launch is yet distinct in my memory, and well I remomqer the great expectations raised among the pleasure seekers of Sanct Mungo as the strange three-decker was being mado ready for competition with the f«\st sailing steamers that plied on the West Coast of Scotland. 1 havo also a distinct recollection of how these hopes wcro blighted by the new strange craft steaming only eight knots an hour, when tho clipper opposition could equal and surpass ten and eleven, Tho first notable part she played was running on tho Clyde on Sundays — a sin which, to Scotch Sabbattarians, was, and I am sorry to say is, deadly in tho extreme. After such a flagrant breach of the fourth commandment, the commodious and handsome Alliance — tho name sho went by then — was, in tho religious world of Glasgow, a doomed vessel, and no doubt her disastrous* end on this coast will be attributed by not a few to that same departure from tho courso of Scotch rectitude. As any one familiar with tho spirit of Sabbatarianism, pure aud undofiled as it exists in tho " Old Countrio," may 6urmisn, she gradually waned in the estimation of the publio of her nntal placo. A Sabbath breaker ! Was not tho name enough to call down wrath sufficient to burst tho boilers, or send her headlong to a watery grave? Thus tho poor Alliance suooumbed to tho prejudices of her friends, nnd it ended in hor being laid up inaotive

for want of the all essential " needful* which only could make her paddles go. But " a change came o'er the spirit of her; dream." In the Capitol House, at Washington, the members for the Southern States began to talk loudly what seemed like treason to the United States. The salt tax they never would pay till armed legions came to exact it, and then rebellion raised her crested head, and North and South became the watchwords of every American, and war to the knife their only theme. Charleston was blockaded, and many a smart steamer made fortunes .for her owners by running the gauntlet of Northern men-of-war that hemmed in that city. This was the field on which the Alliance was to gather her laurels, and win fame for herself, and valuable cotton for the poor starving Lancashire weavers. She made several successful trips, running unscathed through showers of shot and shell, till, in an evil hour, one fell cruiser 1 " bailed her up," and she was lugged to New York, a valuable prize to the nondivisible States. At public auction she fell into the hands of a Boston house, \Vho, after some alterations in her structure and build, consigned her to the Melbourne market. Then springs up the Hokitika rush and the plenitude of gold on the West Coast of New Zealand. A steamer of light draught and large capacity is much wanted, and straightway the Alliance is transferred into the three-funnel-led, covered, decked, paddle- steamer New Zealand, and off she goes with a valuable cargo for the new El Dorado. When she arrived, after a protracted voyage off our coast two months ago, the bar was then running straight out from the mouth of the lagoon, and well I remember the splendid appearance she made as she crossed the bar like a duck, and with a large ciwd following on shore, steamed gaily up to the then unformed wharf. On her departure again to Dunedin, which was on a Sunday, the bar was beginning to shew signs of change, and some fears were entertained by the crowd on shore that a disaster might happen, but no ! she cleared the point of the spit in safety, breasted the huge breakers like, in very truth, a thing of life, and will, and strength. Then follows the last sad chapter in her history. Her extensive repairs in Dunedin, her costly cargo, her crowd of passengers, the huzza as she left the Dunedin jetty, and that much censured rough-and-tumble voyage of which such strange things are whispered, and even openly spoken The part played by the New Zealand after her arrival off this coast, on Sunday, 6th inst., is too well known to the readers of this journal to need recital She crossed the bar in safety on the following Monday afternoon, she stunk in the channel, got slightly damaged, floated clear next tide, but, alas ! only to come broadside on to the beach again to lay down her plates, spars, funnels, and co&tly fittings, together with a large portion of her cargo— a prey to the heavy surf of the South Pacific. On Tuesday, as she lay broken backed on the sand, I went on board to take a last look at my old friend. I entered the saloon and could discern, amid the wreck and confusion, the very spot where, eight years ago, I sat side by side with one who now " sleeps the sleep that knows no waking" under a green turf away down in bonnie Scotland. Sentiment, however, was out of place, and so I, for tho time, buried tho sweet sad memories that the scene awakened, and took my last farewell of my old friend. Her end, like many ou the same coast, was, as our humorist says, " pieces," and whilo tho fragments of the noble wreck are tossed ashore by each succeeding wave, 'I close ray brief reminiscence of the now departed p.s. New Zealand. Sagax.