B.S.L Service

How Many Trips Per Annum?

Letter to the Editor.

THE writer yelept “Frequency,” and Mr.

Musgrave, in your September issue, appear only to have proved that the pre sent service is a one-way service, and that they are mainly concerned with its continuance in order that they may re ceive ten mails a year, instead of the eight, contended by many folk to be all that are necessary.

Mr. Musgrave is only quibbling when he goes back twelve years, to old Planters’

Association days, to dig up the old fight we had for an improved service. Nobody knows better than he, nor complained more loudly than he, of the irregular and inadequate service then existing. It was no unusual thing for the steamer to be days behind her schedule, for cargo to be shut out, or for consignees to be in a con stant state of anxiety at the possibility of having their produce left behind.

Followed the two-steamer service men tioned by “Frequency.” But it must be remembered that these vessels were much smaller than the Mataram, and that only one of them confined itself to the British Solomons, while the other was shared with the Mandated Territory. Rabaul shippers so often monopolised all the space in the latter vessel that the three weekly service became, so far as B.S.I. shippers were concerned, a myth. So there was not so much shipping knocking about in those days as “Frequency” would have us believe. And it is well to remem ber that at that time a number of plant ers and traders were consigning produce to Sydney, instead of as now, selling loc ally for direct shipment overseas.

It was, in fact, the latter factor that finally eased the pressure on the Sydney service. When Australia had lost its grip on the copra trade the Australian politic ians woke up and said we needed brighter and bigger ships and more of them to cope with the vanished traffic, and so we got the Mataram and the present exces sive service. Incidentally, one doubts whether the Mataram is in the habit of leaving the Group in the plethoric state mentioned by “Frequency,” because, af ter all, the forward-looking Burns Philp are only replacing her with a vessel of about the same tonnage.

As for the time-wasting that “Fre quency” makes so merry about, it should be sufficiently obvious that it is not prac ticable for folks with a business of any size, whether it be of a Commercial, Planting, or Mission nature, to meet only every alternate steamer. We were able to do so in the three-weekly service days.

To do so to-day would entail a wait of ten or eleven weeks for supplies—which is too long.

Copra is not a seasonal product, that has to be rushed overseas to catch a mar ket. It is capable of being stored for a reasonable period without marked loss.

That being so, and the trade at present being of so one-sided a nature, it seems natural to suggest that all that is neces

sary to bring about a more rational state of affairs is a readjustment of tonnage.

It can safely be assumed that a service of eight trips a year will fully meet all the present needs of the Solomons. Oc casionally it may be necessary to divert a freighter to lift accumulations from the principal district exporting to Australia, which is a different proposition to in creasing the number of trips of an expen sive passenger steamer. Alternatively, it may be a better plan to dovetail our ser vice in with that of an adjacent Group, and thus iron out the inequality of the present B.S.I. service. Burns Philp may safely be left to work out the details.— I am, etc.,

Leslie F. Gill.

Gizo, B.S.I., 24/10/33.