The company's steamers were able to maintain a reliable timetabled service regularly linking all the colony's main ports. The routes they followed can be conveniently grouped into three sectors. There was a steady shuttle of steamers linking the main east coast ports from Dunedin to Auckland. These included intercolonial liners such as the Rotomahana and Manapouri which touched at all the main east coast ports before crossing the Tasman from either Auckland or Bluff. Then there were services which linked the South Island east coast with the North Island west coast passing through Cook Strait on each voyage. One steamer designed especially for this route was the Takapuna, built in 1883. She was an express mail steamer picking up the mails from the transpacific steamers at Auckland and delivering them to New Plymouth, Wellington and Lyttelton within 36 hours. Finally there was the service provided by such ships as the Mahinapua and Koranui, shuttling between the South Island's east coast and west coast ports. The steamers on all these routes called regularly at Port Nicholson. Clearly Wellington was the main entrepôt of the colony's coastal shipping network. As page 207 page 208 well, she received vessels working more in the tramp tradition, with cargoes such as kauri timber from the Kaipara, specially ordered for city building projects, or sheep from Napier for the rising freezing industry. It is not difficult to see why ‘Touchstone’ found electric lighting on Wellington's wharves to allow cargo handling to continue into the night.⁹