Canterbury Express

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Canterbury Express

Built	1983	LR No.	8115538
Gross	1597	Net	1233
Dimensions	105.95 x 17.56m	Registered	Hamilton
First Arrival	23 December 1985	Last Sailing	9 September 1991
Names	Katania Scol Carrier Canterbury Express Katania ATL Endurance Tanto Sepakat	Years	1983-84 1984-85 1985-96 1996-98 1999-2002 2002-

Built in Shanghai, she is powered by one 3900hp Akasaka diesel, producing a service speed of 13.5 knots. She has a crew of nineteen.

Ice strengthened, she can carry 310 TEU, and has two 36 tonne cranes. Her box-shaped hold is 280,000 cubic feet in size.

You always knew when "Canterbury Express" and her sister ship, "Auckland Express" were in the Manukau. The combination of their full loads and the shallow nature of the harbour meant that when transiting same, the wake of both vessels was brown in colour - they were literally serving as dredgers, scraping the Wairopa Channel clear!

TEL was a joint venture by four groups - McKay Shipping, George H. Scales, Refrigerated Freight Lines and Hetherington & Kingsbury - which was set up to cash in on new trade deals under the Closer Economic Relations agreement between New Zealand and Australia. They initially opted to use Onehunga rather than Auckland because it reduced the trans-tasman crossing by 200 miles, or eighteen hours.

Sourced from Ships of NZ Facebook page

The two-vessel service traded between Onehunga, Sydney, Melbourne, Lyttelton and Wellington, and was expected to add approximately 120,000 tonnes to the annual cargo load handled at Onehunga.

"CantEx" had a bit of a scare in 1988, sustaining minor damage when grounding at the entrance to the Manukau Harbour.

After her years on the Tasman, she has served a handful of owners, and currently plies her trade for Indonesian operators on the Java Sea.

Information partly sourced from Gavin McLean's book

"We Were Different - The Tasman Express Line Story"

sourced from Tasman Express Line's Facebook page

Ships A - F Totals