SS Talune was built in 1890 and scuttled in 1925. She was a passenger and freight steamship employed in the Tasman Sea and South Seas trades in the last decade of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century. It was a typical ship of its time and type in every way. It would be unknown except that it was the ship that brought the deadly 1918 Spanish flu pandemic from New Zealand to Samoa and other Pacific islands.
History
SS (steamship) Talune was built by Ramage & Ferguson, of Leith, Scotland, for the Tasmanian Steam Navigation Company of Hobart, Tasmania, entering service with the company in 1890. It was of 2,087 tons, about 230 feet long, coal fired, and powered by a triple-expansion steam engine. It had passenger accommodation for up to 175 people and a crew of around 56. Initially the Talune was employed on the Hobart-Sydney run for its parent company.
In 1891, the ship was taken over by the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand when it absorbed the Tasmanian company and its assets. The Talune worked thereafter between New Zealand and Australia, and later between New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.
Early service
No complete record of the Talune'''s many voyages has been found, but the ship appears in a number of records from the time. In November 1891, the Talune took the British poet and writer Rudyard Kipling from Wellington to Bluff, and then on to Melbourne as part of a world tour. His opinion of the ship is not recorded. New Zealand poll tax records show that in May 1896 it brought one Ah Lun, a 34-year-old Cantonese man to Wellington from Sydney. In June 1897, it carried Carl Hertz from Bluff to Hobart. Hertz was an American "Illusionist and Prestigidator" who was the most successful early exhibitor to show motion pictures in New Zealand. In 1901, the Talune was the setting for a lethal poisoning reported in the Otago Witness in April.
In its early years, the Talune was involved in two recorded salvage operations. In 1898, it rendered assistance to the SS Ruapehu, stranded on Farewell Spit. In 1899 the Talune fell in with the 5,500-ton Perthshire, which had gone missing on a voyage from Sydney to Wellington. For eight weeks, the Perthshire had been drifting helplessly without power in the Tasman Sea with a broken tailshaft. The Talune towed the larger ship back to Sydney.
First World War service
The Talune saw service in the First World War as His Majesty's New Zealand Transport 16 (HMNZT 16) transporting at least one contingent of troops to Western Samoa. At some time after 1916, the Talune reverted to civilian service and resumed its ordinary voyages.
StrandingTalune's only known stranding occurred on 12 March 1917, in the Egeria Channel, off Nukualofa. The Talune was carrying general cargo and 15 passengers, so by this time may have already reverted to civilian service after serving as a military transport. There was £400 worth of damage done to plates and frames. The Court of Enquiry found the Talune struck an uncharted pinnacle rock, and there is no record of the Master (J. Morrison) being censured.
Influenza in the Pacific
On 7 November 1918, the Talune arrived at Apia in Western Samoa, on one of its regular Pacific voyages from Auckland, New Zealand, successively calling at ports in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Nauru, and then Fiji again before returning to Auckland.
At that time the Western Samoan islands were administered by New Zealand, which had seized them from Germany at the start of the First World War in 1914. The United States of America controlled the Eastern islands.
At the time of the Talunes departure from Auckland, pandemic influenza was spreading rapidly in New Zealand, resulting in many fatalities. Before leaving Auckland two crewmen had reported sick and were sent ashore, but by the time Talune reached Suva in Fiji on 4 November several more crewmen had influenza.
As none of the local passengers was stricken, they were allowed ashore and the cargo unloaded while the ship remained in quarantine alongside the wharf, the Port Health officer having heard reports of the severe epidemic in New Zealand. As was the custom of the time, about 90 Fijian labourers were taken on board to work the cargo as the ship proceeded on its planned voyage. By the time the Talune reached Apia in Samoa on 7 November, most of the Fijian labourers were ill (Rice 200).