shipping line

Problems of a shoestring shipping line

Of all the Pacific Island terri tories, only one owns and runs her own overseas shipping ser vice. Tonga, with the Niuvakai and the Aoniu, operates to both Samoas, Fiji, Rotuma and Aus tralia.

All other territories depend on overseas-owned shipping lines, most of whom are members of the Con ference lines, for their export and im port trade livelihood.

New Zealand is in almost the same position as most Pacific Islands. Both the Union Steam Ship Company and the New Zealand Shipping Company

Ltd. are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Britain’s P and O group.

Holm and Company Ltd., with the Holmburn and the chartered Magga Dan, operate from Auckland to New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, Norfolk Island, Tahiti and the Cook Islands, and the NZ Department of Island Territories, with the Moana Roa, operate to the Cooks.

Captain Athol Rusden, with the Matipo, is currently running from NZ to the New Hebrides.

One New Zealander who believes NZ should have a bigger shipping line of its own, independent of over seas lines, is Captain Clough Blair, who has written a very-readable book, Shoestring Shipping Line, to put his case in print.

His book will revive the old debate which is always just below the water in shipping circles—are cargo con tracts with Conference line vessels a good or a bad thing for small countries like NZ, or the Pacific Islands?

Started his own

Captain Blair started his own ship ping concern—the Tasman Steam Ship Company—with a rehabilitation loan soon after World War 11. His tale, in the book, of the initial dif ficulties and problems he and his partners faced while plying all sorts of cargoes around NZ and to Aus tralia and the Islands is both enter taining and enlightening.

Two lively stories are his account of carrying 200 Tongans from Nukualofa to Niue in a company freighter, and the anecdote about Harry Duane, who claimed he made his fortune selling pink Celanese ladies’ bloomers on Niue.

Captain Blair speaks in a more serious vein when he attacks Con ference line companies for limiting

competition among themselves by setting uniform rates and charges.

Also he criticises them for com bining to meet outside competition by non-Conference vessels, such as Chandris Lines. He has an axe to grind here, for he was an agent for Chandris in Auckland. Some of his complimentary remarks about Chandris Lines can be put down to public relations; nevertheless his book is an interesting, personal account about what happens when you run a shipping line, with some well-based points on NZ’s shipping future thrown in.

Captain Blair, I understand, is currently writing a book about the well-known old South Seas skipper Captain Andy Thomson, A book about Captain Thomson’s experiences in the South Pacific over the past 70 years is well overdue. —K. McG.

(Shoestring Shipping Line. A. H.

and A. W. Reed, Wellington, Auckland and Sydney. $4.25.)