Many not so very old residents—one, in particular, who made his maiden voyage to the Far East in her, with a very jolly ship's company—will learn with regret that the old Empress of India is being broken up at Bombay. At one time she was one of the finest vessels on the Pacific, her sister ships, the Empress of Japan and the Empress of China, being her only rivals. When the war broke out she was bought' by an Indian Rajah from the C. P. R. Ca. (as it then was called), renamed the Loyalty, fitted as a hospital ship, and given to the British Government. After the war was over she was bought by the Scindia Steam Navigation Company for 26 lakhs.of rupees. She was a dead loss to the purchasers and was never run except at a loss, for.her fuel consumption was said to be one of the most extra-vacant on any ship afloat. For the past two years she has been lying in Bombay harbour, able ta get a passenger licence. Meanwhile the Empress of Japan, last of the fiddlebow greyhounds of the Pacific run, has been swinging at her moorings just as indolently in Vancouver. This veteran of 30 years of service has also passed her best days and her future is uncertain, although there are still many years of service in her staunch hull and powerful engines. When she retired from service she boasted the greatest mileage of any ship in the world and, if we remember rightly, she carried her original engines intact and very little trouble had they ever given.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.