BOOM FOR PETSAMO

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 296, 13 December 1940, Page 5

BOOM FOR PETSAMO

SHIPPING OUTLET.

RAILWAY WILL AID RUSSIA.

(Special.) LOXDOX, Oct. 12. Petsamo, the Arctic port which became a familiar name all over the world during the Finnish war as "Finland's icefree port," is having the biggest shipping boom it has ever known.

To prevent congestion in the port, the Finnish Government have made an order that only vessels which have received in advance a permit to call will be allowed to discharge, load or anchor. No other vessels may enter the port.

According to Swedish sources, a cargo service is t© be opened between Petsamo and New York with three vessels of 0000 tone each. Sailings will be three times] a month. Passengers will also be carried. Soon there will be six steamers each month leaving Petsamo for New : York.

Because of the isolation of the Scandinavian and Baltic countries through the Nazi occupation of Norway and Denmark, Petsamo has become practically the onlv outlet.

The new railway which Finland undertook to build under the peace terms with Russia—it will extend from the White Sp a to the. Gulf of Bothnia—has. it js understood, already been completed on the Russian side of the frontier. Before the whole line can be put into use a number of bridge-s, some very large, will have to he built. The railway will be |of great economic and strategic importance to the Soviet Union.