SS Southern Cross - the Old Lady of the Sea
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Built in a Belfast shipyard
for Shaw Savill ‘n Albion Line.
On her flagstaff wind ‘n lee
flew the Southern Cross ensign,
down a slipway to the sea
launched afar by Her Majesty
Behold her pale eau de nil
green ‘n painted hull of grey,
at twenty knots her rate
twenty thousand tons aweigh.
On the seas a ship of fate
the world to circumnavigate
Yon the Empire far ‘n wide
from Southampton to Trinidad.
Where from ship to shore
off I waved goodbye as a lad,
till in the distance I saw
my home to be nevermore
Smoke from her aft funnel
into a big Caribbean sky blew,
then set a course westerly
by merchant captain ‘n crew.
And to each port ‘n quay
across the ocean carried me
I remember gazing in awe
up ‘n down her length ‘n beam,
at the mighty waves below
and how sea ‘n ship did gleam.
In canal gates under tow
winding our way lazy ‘n slow
Crossing the equator I saw
Davy Jones ‘n King Neptune
rising up out of the deep
‘neath a high December moon.
Till in safe passage ‘n keep
back to the depths they leap
Out on Oceania as a boy
in the lido deck pool I did dive.
The Southern Cross ‘n me
would our long voyage arrive,
on in all her hope ‘n glory
the grand old lady of the sea
On final Far East voyage
would alas be her swan song,
beached on a tidal seaway
sold ‘n scrapped in Chittagong.
A line flagship in her day
stripped bare where she lay
Written: May 2017
It was on board this ship nearly 50 years ago that me and my family left Trinidad bound for New Zealand - I was nearly 8 years old. We arrived on Christmas Day 1968 in Wellington (pictured) and a couple days later disembarked in Auckland. Built in the same shipyard as the Titanic in 1954, the SS Southern Cross had a far more fortuitous career transporting immigrants and pleasure seekers across the British Empire until her sad and final resting place in Chittagong, Bangladesh (pictured) where she ended her 50 years of service as the Ocean Breeze in a ship-breaking graveyard in 2004. She was the first passenger liner to be launched by a reigning monarch. Not a big ship by today's standards but as a boy to me she was huge - I thought she was magnificent. Still do.
Copyright © Keith D Trestrail | Year Posted 2022
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