The Magnificent Ships

Two magnificent liners were seen in South Pacific ports in February and March when they were making luxury tours of the area with American tourists. On page 65 is shown the Norwegian-America Line passenger ship "Bergensfjord" which left New York on January 10 and sailed through the Panama Canal to Peru, Easter Is., Pitcairn, Papeete, Rarotonga to New Zealand and Australian ports and returned via Port Moresby, Suva, Honiara, Tonga, American Samoa, French Poly nesia, Galapagos and West Indies. This vessel is less than two years old, has a crew of over 400 and for this cruise the passenger list was restricted to 380.

"Kungsholm", below, belongs to the Swedish Amerika Line, is of 22,000 tons and carried 600 passengers on her Pacific cruise. Port Moresby and Suva were on the itinerary; minimum fare was about £A1,200.

Just before these two Scandinavian ships called, the Matson vessel "Lurline" also did the round. Port Moresby people had these things to say about all these dollar tourists: (a) their wealth is probably in inverse ratio to the weirdness of their clothes—the town was buzzing for days over the odd get-up of most of the visitors; (b) it is exceedingly difficult to extract an honest dollar from these tourists who have been everywhere, seen every thing and already collected most of it.

Moresby shopkeepers say that the best spenders are Australian tourists (possibly be cause they are not yet so blase) and the legendary American who flings his dollars around for grass-skirts and a string of shell beads disappeared from the South Pacific scene when the Gl's returned home after the war. —Photo by Fiji PRO.