The White Star Line was a British shipping company. Founded out of the remains of a defunct packet company, it gradually rose up to become one of the most prominent shipping lines in the world, providing passenger and cargo services between the British Empire and the United States. While many other shipping lines focused primarily on speed, White Star branded their services by focusing more on providing comfortable passages for both upper class travellers and immigrants.
A reefer ship is a refrigerated cargo ship typically used to transport perishable cargo, which require temperature-controlled handling, such as fruits, meat, vegetables, dairy products, and similar items.
MV Joyita was an American merchant vessel from which 25 passengers and crew mysteriously disappeared in the South Pacific in October 1955. She was found adrift with no one aboard.
Empress of Australia was a ferry operated by the Australian National Line. Ordered in 1962 by the Australian National Line and launched by Cockatoo Docks & Engineering Company on 18 January 1964, Empress of Australia was the largest passenger ferry built in the world.
HMAS Jervis Bay was a roll-on/roll-off passenger and vehicle ferry operated by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) between 1977 and 1994.
Edwin Fox is one of the world's oldest surviving merchant sailing ships. The Edwin Fox is also the only surviving ship that transported convicts to Australia. She is unique in that she is the "only intact hull of a wooden deep water sailing ship built to British specifications surviving in the world outside the Falkland Islands". Edwin Fox carried settlers to both Australia and New Zealand and carried troops in the Crimean War. The ship is dry-docked at The Edwin Fox Maritime Centre at Picton in New Zealand.
Cospatrick was a wooden three-masted full-rigged sailing ship that caught fire south of the Cape of Good Hope early on 18 November 1874, while on a voyage from Gravesend, England, to Auckland, New Zealand. Only three of the 472 persons on board survived the disaster, which is often considered the worst in New Zealand's history.
SS Gothic was a passenger-cargo liner launched in December 1947, though not completed until a year later. She became the most famous of the quartet when she was designated a royal yacht from 1952 to 1954.
HMAS Lae (L3035) was a Landing Ship, Tank which was operated by the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy (RAN). She was built by William Denny and Brothers at Dumbarton, Scotland during World War II and was launched on 24 October 1944.
Crusader (AV2767) was an Australian Army amphibious operations support ship of World War II. She was launched shortly before the war ended and entered service in late 1945. From 1945 to 1947 she was mainly used to return Australian Army equipment from the islands off New Guinea. She was also loaned to the Australian Shipping Board in early 1947 and transported earth moving equipment and timber between Melbourne and Tasmania. However, the Army did not need a ship with Crusader's capabilities after the war, and she was sold in 1947 to the Queensland Cement and Lime Company which operated her as a coral barge on the Brisbane River until the mid-1980s. The ship was scuttled in 1986 and became a popular dive wreck.
Lavia was a cruise ship that caught fire and sank in Hong Kong Harbour in 1989. She was built for Cunard White Star Line in 1947 as the cargo liner Media. In 1961 she was sold to Italy, rebuilt as an ocean liner and renamed Flavia. In 1969, she was refitted as a cruise ship and renamed Flavian. In 1982 she was sold to Panama and renamed Lavia. She was undergoing a refit when the fire occurred. The damage to her was so great that she was scrapped.
Ocean Telegraph was a clipper ship that was built in Massachusetts in 1854 and was last known of in Gibraltar in 1923. She was in US ownership until 1863, when UK interests bought her and renamed her Light Brigade.
SS Aorangi was a passenger and refrigerated cargo ship built by John Elder & Co. of Govan, Glasgow for the New Zealand Shipping Company and launched in 1883. She was chartered by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) between April 1914 until 1915. In 1915, she was sunk as a blockship at Scapa Flow. In 1920, she was raised but re-sank in Kirk Bay.
Comet was an 1851 California clipper built by William H. Webb which sailed in the Australia trade and the tea trade. This extreme clipper was very fast. She had record passages on two different routes: New York City to San Francisco, and Liverpool to Hong Kong, and beat the famous clipper Flying Dutchman in an 1853 race around the Horn to San Francisco.
SS Kwinana was an Australian ocean-going cargo and passenger steamship. She was built in England in 1892 as the cargo ship SS Darius. In 1912 she changed owners, was refitted as a cargo and passenger ship and renamed Kwinana.
SS Hertford was a refrigerated cargo steamship that was launched in Germany in 1917, seized by the United Kingdom in 1920 as World War I reparations, and sunk by a U-boat in 1942 with the loss of four members of her crew.
RMS Parthia was the second of two all first class transatlantic passenger cargo liners built for the Cunard Line. She later served on the London to Auckland route for the New Zealand Shipping Company under the name Remuera, and still later as a Pacific cruise ship under the name Aramac. She was scrapped in 1969–70.
The New Zealand Company was a 19th-century English company that played a key role in the colonisation of New Zealand. The company was formed to carry out the principles of systematic colonisation devised by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the creation of a new-model English society in the southern hemisphere. Under Wakefield's model, the colony would attract capitalists who would then have a ready supply of labour—migrant labourers who could not initially afford to be property owners, but who would have the expectation of one day buying land with their savings.
The Jubilee class were a group of five passenger and cargo ocean liners built by Harland and Wolff at Belfast, for the White Star Line, specifically for the White Star Line's service from the UK to Australia on the Liverpool–Cape Town–Sydney route. The five ships in order of the dates they entered service were:
Langton Grange was a refrigerated steam cargo ship built in 1896 by the Workman, Clark & Co. of Belfast for Houlder Brothers & Co. of London to transport meat and other produce from Australia and South America to United Kingdom.
Devitt and Moore (1863-1886)