The Lady of the Water

David Jones

The Koopa was launched on 15 September 1911 and after trials on 14 October, completed and left Leith under the command of Captain Robert Douglas Taylor six days later. In the English Channel she met heavy weather and was forced to shelter off Margate and later in Portsmouth. She made most of her passage on one boiler only, which gave her a speed of 11 knots, but in the Bay of Biscay both boilers were fired and on three successive days she steamed 332, 328 and 290 miles, an average of up to 14 knots. Calls for coal and water were made at Gibraltar, Port Said, Perim (southern entrance to the Red Sea), Colombo, Batavia, Thursday Island, Cooktown and Townsville.
On Christmas Eve of 1911 the Koopa entered the Brisbane River for the first time, and she was met off Hamilton by company and other officials in the Greyhound, and given a clean bill of health. Crowds were waiting for her on the tug company’s wharf by the Customs House as she rounded Kangaroo Point, flags gaily flying from both masts, but she steamed straight past to the South Brisbane railway wharf to coal about 5pm.
The Jones’ Brothers telling of their Koopa story inject this much loved maritime icon into the social fabric that formed the halcyon times in Brisbane and in coastal communities bordering Moreton Bay post World War I.
She was the doyenne of pleasure steamers in Moreton Bay who proudly served her adoptive country in Peace and in War.
The Jones’ Brothers telling of their Koopa story inject this much loved maritime icon into the social fabric that formed the halcyon times in Brisbane and in coastal communities bordering Moreton Bay post World War I.