The only specialised marine publication in Oceania that focuses on the maritime industry, from super yachts to small craft to large commercial ships, including coastal shipping, tugs, tow boats, barges, ferries, tourist, sport-fishing craft, je
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Lyttelton looking great in the dock of the wheelhouse and funnel so that the tug could pass under a bridge, proved to be financially excessive so these plans were also abandoned. Dick Musson and his friends, by then numbering 45 and later to become the 'Tug Lyttelton Preservation Society', were given the opportunity to show what they could do and they immediately got to work on the vessel. Their ultimate objective was to obtain a passenger certificate for the vessel so it could generate income by providing trips in and around the harbour on a regular basis. Lyttelton was dry-docked on the June 22, 1973 and undocked about a month later, by which time some 2749 man-hours had been expended on her. It had all been worthwhile, because on Sunday October 14, 1973 the tug started her new career as a passenger steamer, albeit simply on charter from the Lyttelton Harbour Board. The Lyttelton eventually became the property of the Tug Lyttelton SADLY, HER SUCCESSOR WAS NOT SO LUCKY When the Lyttelton II was disposed of by the Harbour Board she was at risk of languishing on the waterfront before being sold for a modest fee to Australian interests. The Lyttelton II was a sister to Auckland's William C Daldy. In April 1981 she departed Lyttelton for the west coast to coal up before becoming the last coal fired steamship to cross the Tasman Sea. She made passage to Melbourne to join the local historic maritime museum where she was renamed the Victoria. Unfortunately the Australians could not maintain her and she reverted to her original name before she was finally scrapped on the eve of Lyttelton's 100 year celebrations. When cut up it was found that her hull was in remarkable condition overall, which was all a bit sad really. On a brighter note her triple expansion main engines survived and are now being restored by the Melbourne Traction Steam Engine Club. 12 NZ WORKBOAT REVIEW 2013 Preservation Society on the October 26, 1991 when the Lyttelton Port Company, the successors of the Board, sold her for the nominal sum of $1. The tug is now maintained and operated by fully qualified and competent members of the Society. At the present time the Lyttelton is licensed to carry 150 passengers and a crew of up to 19. She normally sails with a crew of 12, although eight or nine would be permissible. Within those numbers there has to be a master and a chief engineer, both of whom must hold the appropriate qualifications, a second engineer, a stoker, and four or five deckhands. From cold, it takes some 48 hours to raise steam in the tug's Scotch Marine Boiler. The maximum pressure they now work with is 80 lbs psi, rather than the 110 lbs psi declared maximum when the tug was new, when she was also rated at 1,000hp. The boiler is 17ft in diameter, 11ft long and holds some 30 tons of water. 7/8in riveted steel plates were used in its construction, and the two forged endplates are connected by stay rods. There are four corrugated furnace tubes feeding the hot gases into the combustion chamber. The gases then travel back through the boiling water in 300 fire tubes, each four inches in diameter and then up into the funnel that is five foot in diameter and 22ft high.The four furnaces have a total grate area of 78ft2. At each side of the stokehold is a bunker that holds 17 tons of steaming coal which is consumed at about a third of a ton an hour when steaming. Pressure is usually managed at 70 lbs psi and the steam passes to the two main compound engines through six inch steam pipes. Fergusson Brothers of Newark Shipyard also built the two compound reciprocating engines. These are equipped with steam-assisted Stephenson's reversing gear and built-in condensers. Each high pressure cylinder is 20in in diameter, the diameter of the low pressure cylinders being double that. The stroke on both cylinders in each of the two