Taken by Kiwi, www.seatheships.org.uk
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Built in Hoogezand for the Northern Steam Ship Company, she was powered by one 800hp De Industrie diesel engine, which produced a service speed of 11.6 knots.
She was launched on 19 March 1953 at the Hoogezand shipyard of Martenshoek of Jac. Bodewes, a facility which contains 32 shipyards and stretches some nine miles along the narrow Hoogezand canal, into which ships are launched sideways. Captain C. P. Keane, who was Officer-in-Charge at Onehunga later in his career, was in command for her delivery voyage.
She primarily served South Island ports from Auckland and Tauranga, but called at Onehunga occasionally, on one occasion stranding in the Manukau in June 1963 - she was refloated the next day. She was fitted out for carrying bulk wheat in 1967, and completed 25 such voyages without incident ...
Sourced from Ships of NZ Facebook page
On a voyage from Lyttelton to Auckland on 13 June 1968, she sank in heavy weather some 31 miles east of Great Mercury Island when the cargo of wheat she was carrying shifted, the absence of shifting boards enabling water to enter her double bottom tanks through uncovered and unplugged air pipes, forcing a 35 degree list.
Nine members of her fifteen-strong crew lost their lives in the tragedy, unable to follow their six crew-mates in boarding the Swedish freighter "Mirrabooka" before the prevailing winds blew the liferaft away from the rescue ship and into the night. Despite the best efforts of Captain Thorsten Wahlstedt and his crew, they were unable to rediscover the raft in the darkness.
A tribute to the lost crewmen, written by Mike Subritzky, can be found here.
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