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AVOCA (1866)
Service dates: 1866-1882
Official number: 54691
Shipping lines: P&O STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY
Ship type:
Passenger Liner.
Career
- 29.12.1865
- Purchased on the stocks. P&O was so pleased with Denny’s Geelong that it bought the unsold number 118 as well.
- 31.03.1866
- Launched.
- 23.05.1866
- Registered.
- 29.05.1866
- Delivered as Avoca for The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. Avoca is a beautiful valley in County Wicklow, as well as a small town in Victoria. It is not known which was the reason for P&O’s selection of the name, but Geelong is also an Australian town.
- 12.06.1866
- Maiden sailing Southampton/Alexandria.
- 01.08.1866
- Left Southampton for Simons Bay and Bombay (arrived 5th October)
- 28.06.1870
- Broke down at King George Sound.
- 25.10.1870
- Collision with the Melbourne brigantine Challenger, but was found blameless.
- 28.10.1870
- Another collision at Sydney.
- 11.1872
- On local services from Hong Kong.
- 12.1874
- Returned to her builders for a refit during which her engines were compounded (now 1,170 ihp) and new boilers were fitted.
- 1875
- Bombay/Alexandria service with some voyages Alexandria/Venice.
- 1876
- On the Melbourne/Sydney shuttle service – the mail contract, due to inter-state rivalry, insisted on a terminus in Victoria – when her carpenter stole £5,000 in gold from the strongroom.
- End 1876
- Bombay/Alexandria and Alexandria/Venice.
- 1877/1880
- Melbourne/Sydney shuttle.
- 1880/1882
- Bombay/Far East service.
- 08.1882
- Taken up by the Government as one of 7 P&O ships used for transport duties in the Egyptian campaign, in her case for some two months.
- 29.10.1882
- Sold for £12,943 to agents of the Sultan of Zanzibar.
- 07.1896
- Sold to Hajee Cassum Joosub, Bombay.
- 1900
- Sold to shipbreakers at Bombay.