British Shipbuilding

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25328, 30 October 1947, Page 6

British Shipbuilding

The cabled summary from Lloyd’s Register, a few days ago, showed that 53 per cent, of the world’s new tonnage is under construction in British and Irish shipyards and that the total completed or under construction in the first three quarters of the year is the highest for 25 years. This is cheerful news to read but unfortunately tells only half the story. The other half was provided in the September issue of “ The “Times Review of Industry” and in the “ Financial Times ” of October 11. Though the contributors of both articles concentrated on the Clyde and east coast Scottish yards, the nature of their evidence shows that it may be taken as typical of the industry as a whole. The first point suggests that statistics which lump completed tonnage and tonnage under construction may be seriously misleading. The 30 Scottish yards, for example, completed 408,500 gross tons in 1946, about 38 per cent, of the United Kingdom total In the first three quarters of 1947, they have completed 287,700 tons, and the remaining quarter mav see the total increased by 100,000 tons, including the 34,000ton Cunard White Star Caronia. I

The estimated Scottish total for the year is therefore less than last year’s, though it will be a slightly higher percentage (about 40) of the United Kingdom total This, when the -Economic Survey was issued, was planned to be 1,250,000 tons, or 25 per cent, more than 1946; but the winter fuel shortage checked building so badly that a midsummer reestimate brought the figure down as low as 750,000 tons. It is now expected to reach, or nearly to reach, the 1946 figure of 1,000,000 tons. That represents no small effort to defeat adversity; but while the comparison can be made to look better by taking in ships on the stocks as well as ships on the water, it is also made to look better than the facts warrant. The Scottish yards have more than 200 ships under construction or on order; these total 900.000 tons and represent two years’ work. But delivery dates are so uncertain and final prices also so uncertain that owners have begun to draw away from the risk. British and foreign shipping companies have cancelled orders; others have deferred their building plans. Nobody blames the shipbuilders. The delays are not of their making: ships are held up for want of small electric motors, of locks and hinges, of paint, steel, and timber. Nor can builders help it if coal, power, steel, timber, and their other raw and finished requirements jump in price. They have jumped so high that, as New Zealanders were told some time ago, the launching of a ship for the New Zealand service was.the occasion for some very grave words, spoken by the representative of the owner company.

Two of the shortages mentioned above deserve separate mention The fuel crisis cuts early this year brought steel deliveries to shipyards down to 60 per cent, of normal, a figure which allows for the slight increase in July. Barely a month ago, shipbuilders were told that their fourth-quarter allocation would be calculated as a proportion of their third-quarter consumption, wfcich meant, roughly, that they woiSd receive 40 per cent, less than they required. Again, shipbuilders are not permitted to take delivery of decking and other timbers earlier than 10 weeks before a ship is due to be launched. This means in practice that they have to scramble to get timber, often unseasoned and poor, treated to suit the purpose; which means additional cost and the cost of delay as well. The shipbuilders blame the Admiralty, which allocates raw materials to the yards through the Directorate of Merchant Shipping and Repairs; and those who see the dead hand of bureaucracy clasping ail controls will be read# to agree that the Admiralty is better at battles than in breaking bottlenecks. Shipbuilders were encouraged by the Economic Survey, which, quite rightly, set shipbuilding on the same level of importance as any industry “ producing entirely for export ’’. It sells ships oversea or it -adds them to the British mercantile fleet, to save and earn foreign exchange. But events have been Igss encouraging than words. Even encouraging words have become rare. When Sir Stafford Cripps spoke to British industrialists, on October 12, outlining the new export production plan, he had none to say about shipbuilding. That, of course, may signify nothing: he will come to the yards in due time. But meanwhile an industry among those few which can master their American rivals in every point of relative efficiency, output rate, and cost is so bedevilled, with abundant work to do, that one Clyde yard alone has had to lay off 300 men. This is doubly damaging. Work is halted; and men laid off may be lost for good, as thousands of skilled men were lost to the Clyde in the depression. Sir Stafford Cripps cannot place shipbuilding anywhere but in his highest group of industrial priorities and can hardly do anything more important than to see that its priority is effective.