Huge Losses Force Aorangi Off

Trans-Pacific Run

11HE Sydney manager of the Union , Steamship Company announced on July 3 that the Aorangi, only pas senger ship on the Australasia-North America run, will be withdrawn from the beginning of January, 1951. Huge losses, he said, have forced the company to this action.

The Canadian Australasian Line, which runs the Aorangi, has been negotiating for some time with the governments of New Zealand, Australia and Canada for subsidies to keep Aorangi running. New Zealand was prepared to pay its share of the subsidy—£lo,ooo a year—but the governments of Australia and Canada re fused. Therefore Aorangi comes off the run, and what was once regarded as a vital shipping route will be without pas senger ships.

The American Matson line ships, Mon terey and Mariposa, were withdrawn after the war and since she went back onto the run in 1948, Aorangi has had the Pacific service to herself. Passenger accommodation has been fully booked at fares twice pre-war rates—yet even under what once would have been favour able conditions, the company has sus tained substantial losses.

Greatest factor in the present state of affairs is lack of trade between Australia and North America because of “dollar restrictions.” Although the travelling public has always been sceptical of the ship owners’ adage that “passengers do not pay” it is evident that they do not, in this post-war era of labour shortages, inflated wages, ever mounting cost of everything from food to furnishings, and slow turn around in ports—particularly Australasian ports. Nor does Aorangi carry as many passengers now as before her post-war refit. Passenger cabins were reduced considerably to make way for improved crew’s quarters.

A contributary cause of Aorangi’s losses is the competition of three trans pacific air services carrying mails and passengers at not much higher fares than bv ship.

Dollar restrictions, if not actually in vented by the Socialist governments, be came a pivot of their policy. It is un likely that the present Australian gov ernment will rely on such a negative means of solving this problem of trade and exchange with the Americans. Prime Minister Menzies left Australia in mid- July for America and the United King dom where it is believed that he will try to iron out some of the dollar dif ficulties in a positive way.

There has been much talk in Canberra of attracting dollar tourists in the Mat son ships, if and when they return to the Pacific run. There seems no reason why these tourists should not be attracted in Aorangi—if they can be attracted at all. It is six months yet before the Aorangi actually comes off the Pacific run. Much can happen in that time and it is likely that some solution to the problem will be found before then. No one is more keenly aware of the neces sity of removing the ridiculous restric tions on trade with America than the present Australian government.

THE, 17,490 ton Aorangi was launched in 1924 which makes here something of a veteran. She was a troop ship during the war—carrying Empire Air Scheme trainees to Canada; Americans

across the Atlantic; Tommies to Malaya in the early days of the Pacific war. She was at North African landings; was a “mother” ship for a Awhile and later went back to the Pacific.

She began her post-war refit in Sydney in April, 1946. It took two years (four times longer than it took to fit her out originally); she became known as the

“Iron Lung” because of the number of men it kept going; and cost £1,750,000 — much more than the original cost of the whole ship.

She left Sydney on her first post-war voyage in August, 1948. It is reported that the loss on that first voyage was £150,000. If the Socialist experiment in Australia and New Zealand did nothing else it can, at least, be said to have an nihilated the once flourishing South Pacific shipping business. The so-called “big shipping interests” have always been a target for these Ked gentlemen. They seem, however, to have achieved their end without benefiting their “working man” to any extent.