Matua’s Skipper Leaves

The Sea

CAPTAIN A. R. RUSSELL who has been master of MV Matua since 1944 and in the service of the Union Steam ship Company since 1913, has retired from the sea. We wish him well—growing roses or raising chickens or doing any of those other landlubber things retired sea cap tains are traditionally supposed to yearn to do.

The eight years in which he was skipper of Matua could not have been easy years.

During most of them, the small 4,000-ton ship has been the only direct cargo-pas senger sea link between New Zealand and Fiji, Western Samoa and Tonga. Until the post-war development of commercial air transport relieved the pressure, Matua was the only means of travelling between these Islands and Auckland and beyond.

Matua is a comparatively modern ship, well-appointed to carry about 40 passen gers in one and two-berth cabins. During the war and post-war years she carried over 100 between Auckland and Fiji.

Those were the days when the letters MOF did not mean Ministry of Food or Master of Foxhounds to the people of this part of the Pacific but, ominously, Mattress on Floor —of the Matua. Each cabin had its complement of MOF’s—there were also others in a hold, and what had once been the lounge was turned into a dormitory.

Weather between Auckland and Suva is more likely to be bad than good, Matua is built on destroyer lines which can play havoc with even a sea-hardened stomach, and the consequent discomfort to pas sengers in those MOF days was consider able. However, residents of those islands served by her, love her for her services during these uncomfortable years rather

than for her service in more spacious times.

Matua maintained her service through out the dangerous years, and slipping un heralded in and out of port because of the security blackout, became something like a talisman to the folk of the South Pacific. She missed only one call—Apia —on an occasion when it was reported that a Jap warship was waiting for her She carried a four-inch gun, a 12-pounder' an assortment of other armament and a

khaki-clad team of NZ servicemen to man them. But apart from practice they were never used. Matua’s luck held, although other ships were sunk.

Captain Russell reached New Zealand from England in 1913 as 4th officer in RMS Niagara (Niagara carrying a valu able shipment of gold to the United States hit a mine north of Auckland in 1940 and was lost). Captain Russell will be suc ceeded in the Matua by Captain N. Pear son formerly on a NZ coaster.