Aorangi Out

Post-War Conditions Kill Last Trans-Pacific Surface Line

WHEN the motor-ship Aorangi, 17,490 tons, sailed out of Sydney on Decem ber 7, her owners (Union SS Co.

Ltd.) announced that, when she returns to Sydney on January 29, she will be put out of commission and advertised for sale, and her crew paid off.

As a result, there will be left not one regular trans-Pacific steamship service, connecting North America with Australia and New Zealand. Before World War II there were four large regular liners—the Aorangi, the Niagara, the Monterey and the Mariposa. The Niagara was sunk dur ing the war; and, after the war, the Mat son Line refused o continue running the Monterey and Mariposa without a sub stantial subsidy; and those two luxury liners are also in the discard, somewhere.

Before World War I, there were three or four regular trans-Pacific lines. Some ran via Fiji, some via Tahiti.

This extraordinary deterioration of trans-Pacific shipping services is due to two factors —the substitution of air for sea transportation for passengers, and the imposition of intolerably expensive conditions on shipping services by the Socialist authorities which have come into being in recent years.

The Aorangi, for example, cost originally over £1,000,000 in 1924. Early in the war, she was converted for use as a troopship.

Her re-conversion to a liner commenced in 1946 and—subjected to all the dock yard laziness and go-slow-ism which have characterised dockyard operations since the war—the operation cost £2,000,000, which was considerably more than her original cost. She re-entered the Pacific service in 1948 with a substantial financial handicap.

During 1949 and 1950 she could not get nearly enough cargo to fill her holds— the direct result of the dollar restrictions.

Trans-Pacific passengers literally clam oured for berths on her; but, when she was re-converted, her owners were obliged to reduce the original 900 berths to 485 berths, so as to provide more and better quarters for the crew. In addition, the company has suffered grievously owing to the slow turn-around of ships in the ports, and the enormous cost of port operations generally.

Six months ago the company said it could not run the Aorangi unless it had a subsidy of at least £156,000 per annum— New Zealand £13,000, Australia £39,000, and Canada £104,000. NZ and Australia were willing; but Canada flatly refused— it did not consider that Canadian -South Pacific trade was worth anything like that. The Union Co.—which by now has lost no less than £600,000 on the Aorangi —therefore decided that there was nothing to do other than put the vessel out of commission.