about a ship called Dunedin

It was a huge commercial risk at the time. The Otago company which funded it couldn't get an insurer for the cargo, since the refrigeration technology was literally in its infancy and no one apart from the backers (and maybe not even them) believed that it would succeed. Most people were convinced that the ship would arrive in London with a hold full of stinking semi-liquid detritus.

But they went ahead anyway, and it was a success. And that set the scene for nearly 80 years of uninterrupted export of whole carcases, nearly all sheep and frozen solid, to Britain. The entire NZ economy came to revolve around them thar dead sheep, to our national detriment in the long run.

Then, of course, Britain joined the ECC. Woe, woe!

I still have a picture of the Dunedin on my wall, in full sail, with a smokestack belching fumes from the boiler which drove the refrigeration engine befouling the entire ship ...




The idiot also known as Capfka ...