GAP IN SAILINGS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 64, 9 December 1936, Page 10

GAP IN SAILINGS

Steamer Services To America LAST FOR SIX WEEKS Shipping Strike and Other Factors Due to a combination of circumstances, the regular passenger and mall traffic from New Zealand to the Pacific Coast of America, has been drastically interrupted. The Canadian-Aus-tralasian motor-liner, Aorangi, left Auckland yesterday afternoon for Vancouver, and it will be six weeks before there is a further passenger sailing from New Zealand, The arrival of the Union Royal Mail liner Makura at Wellington late on Monday night , from San Francisco, saw the end of that old-established service, and permanently removed one link in the chain of regular sailings. The maritime strike at Pacific Coast United States ports has led to the cancellation. in tlie meanwhile, of the Matson service, leaving the C.-A. Line the sole link with the Pacific Coast. When the withdrawal of the Union mail line to San Francisco was announced, a change in the CanadianAustralasian time-table was also announced, and this change has lengthened the gap in the sailings from four weeks to six weeks. As the C.-A. liners and the Matson liners have been running practically side by side, the Union Company decided, on the withdrawal of the San Francisco service, to alter the C.-A. time-table so that it would, so far as sailing dates were concerned, replace the San Francisco service, and thus, in conjunction with the Matson liners, maintain a regular fortnightly passenger and mail connection between New Zealand and America. New Time-table. The new time-table puts back the sailing of the C.-A. liners a fortnight, the first vessel affected being the Niagara, which is now en route from Vancouver to Auckland and Sydney. The vessel is due at Auckland on December 21, and at Sydney on December 26. She will then remain at Sydney until January 21, when she will leave for Auckland and Vancouver. The Aorangi on her next voyage south will leave Vancouver on December 30, arriving at Auckland on January 18, and at Sydney on January 23. She will then remain at Sydney until February IS when she will leave for Auckland and Vancouver. While the Niagara and Aorangi are thus idle at Sydney, they will each undergo an extensive overhaul and refit.

During the next six weeks, mails for the United States and Canada will mainly go by the liners leaving New Zealand for England or Atlantic American ports, via the Panama Canal, and tranship at Balboa. Tankers leaving New Zealand for San Pedro sometimes take mails, but present indications are that there will not, before January, be any tankers leaving here for America. All the cargo ships trading from Pacific Coast ports of America to New Zealand return to America via Australia, and consequently would be of no use for the carriage of mails from this country, though they might perhaps carry mails from Australia to America.