SS Talune

SS Talune in Port Chalmers graving dock, c. 1890s
History
NameSS Talune
OperatorTasmanian Steam Navigation Company / (1891 on) Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand
BuilderRamage & Ferguson, of Leith, Scotland
In service1890
Out of service1921
FateScuttled November 1925 at Miramar, Wellington, New Zealand
General characteristics
Tonnage2,087 gross tons
PropulsionSingle triple-expansion steam engine
Capacity175 passengers
Crew56 crew

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.