Next Year
p. 40 · Read in the full issue
Tofua for Pacific Next Year
PROVIDING that the hot war does not spread any further, a new 5,300 ton passenger-cargo ship should be on the Auckland-Polynesia run in just a year from now.
The new vessel is being built for the Union Steamship Company in Scotland and will be launched about March, 1951.
She will be Tofua Mark 11. Her name sake was built for the company in 1908 and sold for breaking up in 1934.
The new Tofua is designed for the islands fruit trade—she will call at Suva, Apia and Rarotonga, etc.—but will also carry 75 passengers. She will be 1,200 tons larger than her elder sister, Matua, which was built at Newcastle-on-Tyne and came into the Pacific service in 1936.
Tofua will be welcome in the Pacific trade —doubly so because the tendency in these post-war years has been for shipowners to curtail or abandon their well-established services in the face of economic and industrial difficulties. r Two young Californians, on a world tour, Mr. Tom Steele and Miss Joyce Johnson, recently arrived in Brisbane in a 31-foot ketch. They sailed via Hono lulu, Christmas Island, Pago Pago and Suva. After their marriage in Bris bane they will call at Port Moresby and New Guinea ports on their return home.