"SOLD FOREIGN."

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 150, 27 June 1931, Page 11

"SOLD FOREIGN."

STEAMERS GO EAST. CHINESE CREW FOR KAITUNA. HOME PORT HONGKONG. Making final arrangements for the dispatch of bis latest purchase, the steamer Kaituna, to Hongkong, Mr. S. T. Williamson, of the Williamson Shipping Company, is now in Auckland. With the Kaituna and the Kamona, which is being overhauled at Wellington for the voyage to the East, Mr. Williamson has seven former Union Company ' vessels in his fleet. Hongkong is their home port, anil is Mr. Williamson's headquarters, and from there his ships trade to all the ports' of the Far East, to Japan, Java, Siam, Indo-China, Singapore and the Philippine Islands. "The port of Hongkong is the centre of Eastern trade, and a tremendous achievement of British enterprise," remarked Mr. Williamson. "Very few people here realise that Hongkong is the third greatest port in the world, with 47 million tons of shipping entering each year." The thought of the dowdy old Kaituna entertaining a horde of yellow pirates has been the subject of many jokes on the Auckland waterfront since her sale was announced, but Mr. Williamson says that as long as she keeps going she is not likely to fall a victim to the sea raiders of the China coast. Passenger steamers, he says, are sometimes taken by pirates, who go aboard as passengers, but the cargo steamers, if their crews are trusty, are safe. Let a ship break down, however, or go ashore, and very soon she is boarded and looted. More damaging to trade than the depredations of the pirates is the slump in the price of silver, on which the currency is based. Through the slump, the dollar has fallen in value from 0/2 to about 1/, and business has been hard hit. "The price of silver affects us far more," said Mr. Williamson, "than piracy or civil war. There has been no lighting near Hongkong, though, of course, the unsettled state of the country is bad for trade. The parties seem' to be able to buy plenty of munitions from Europe •without resorting to romantic capers, like gun-running, and the fighting is more or less continuous in some part of the country or another." A Chinese crew is now putting the Kaituna into sea-going trim and she will soon be ready to sail. Similarly the Kamona, at Wellington, has 'a Chinese crew already aboard.