Posts:68 Joined: February 14th, 2012, 9:01 pm
Location: New Zealand
Being a Kiwi myself, I trod the decks of Royalist in a Navy Day school outing at the tender age of 7. My love of ships and the sea was born!!! What a beautiful ship she was, That wraparound bridge was so cool and has taken Raybans another 20 years to get right with their sunglasses... Unfortunately for Royalist it was seawater in the condensers and Boilers off the Solomon Is. in Nov/1965 that killed her off. It was off to the breakers in 1966, as the cost of repairs was to much. So ended the last of the NZ cruisers that started with HMNZs Philomel rose to the heights of Achilles and Leander and finished with "The Last Dido", a proud tradition lasting over 50 years. (Now we buy Australian..... the shame of it...)