MISSION WORK IN MELANESIA

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27639, 21 April 1955, Page 11

MISSION WORK IN MELANESIA

NEED FOR SMALLER SHIP COMMENT BY BISHOP HILL “The Press” Special Service HAMILTON, April 20. The Bishop of Melanesia (the Rt. Rev. A. T. Hill) told the Hamilton Rotary Club that this month he is going to England to fight his “last battle.” He will see his mission committee, to press for a smaller mission ship than the proposed new Southern Cross. A smaller ship is necessary to get his mission “out of the red.”

Thanking New Zealanders for raising £42,000 toward a new Southern Cross, Bishop Hill said that in England he would have ( the support of Melanesia and New Zealand behind him for a small ship. The reason why his mission had been “hard up for years and years” was that the Southern Cross had- taken a third of all the funds in maintenance. It was now in an Australian port waiting for a buyer. Bishop Hill said that the work in Melanesia could be continued efficiently and safely with a smaller ship, and he thought that, instead of carrying five white officers, the new ship could have a white captain and Melanesian junior officers. He realised that future bishops might not be sailors like himself, and the new ship he had in mind would have a moderate degree of comfort for them.