RUAPEHU (1901)

Service dates: 1916-1931

Official number: 111357

Shipping lines: NEW ZEALAND SHIPPING COMPANY LTD.

Ship type:

• Passenger Ship

Passenger/Cargo Ship.

Career

21.02.1901

Launched.

18.04.1901

Delivered as Ruapehu for JB Westray and WC Dawes at a cost of £147,010.

20.04.1901

Registered to JB Westray and WC Dawes at Plymouth.

05.1901/11.1901

Chartered to the Allan Line steamship Co Ltd of Glasgow and made 5 round voyages to Canada. She was renamed Australasian while on the charter.

05.12.1901

Left London on her first New Zealand sailing to Wellington.

02.06.1902

Grounded briefly off West Africa, bound London to Wellington.

12.10.1904

Collided successively in fog in the Thames with the spritsail barge Albert, the Loch Elvie and the ketch Thomas Stratten and a barge.

17.03.1905

48 shares were transferred to the New Zealand Shipping Company, the remaining 16 followed on 19th March 1906.

1906

No longer a steerage passenger capacity.

1911

Passenger capacity now only second and third class.

16.10.1914/03.12.1914

Sailed with the Main Body of New Zealand troops in the first convoy from Wellington to Alexandria via Albany.

21.01.1915

In collision at Cardiff, bound London to Lyttelton.

07.09.1916

Takeover of the New Zealand Shipping Company by The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company agreed.

02.06.1917/22.05.1919

Came under the Liner Requisition Scheme.

12.08.1917

Suffered a bunker fire at Auckland.

03.12.1918

Fire broke out in a storeroom while in dry-dock in the Royal Albert Dock, London.

13.10.1920

Fire in No.4 ‘tween deck at Lyttelton.

14.01.1921

Resumed passenger sailings to New Zealand.

15.05.1925

While she was dry-docked at Millwall, London, a fire broke out in the No.3 hold and spread to Nos.1 and 2 as well as the bridge.

29.04.1931

Laid up at Falmouth.

05.08.1931

Sold for £5,000 to S A Cant. di Porto Venere for breaking up.

10.09.1931

While in course of demolition at Savona, she damaged a wharf in a gale.

Ship technical details (PDF)