SHIPPING BOOKED UP

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 67, 16 September 1936, Page 10

SHIPPING BOOKED UP

THE CORONATION

PASSENGERS FOR ENGLAND

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, August 12.

Foreign shipping companies are to benefit from the Coronation next year. One of the strange repercussions of this ceremony will be a diverting of passenger bookings. The Blue Funnel Line and the P. and O. Line and its associated companies have booked up every cabin in their homeward-bound ships which reach England next year in time for the Coronation.

The bookings for the Canadian Pacific liners in April and May are also very heavy, but the Empress of Britain will not be a "Coronation ship," because her cruise at that time of year will prevent her passage from Canada to Britain. There are many travellers now leaving London for Australia and New Zealand and other parts of the Empire who wish to return next May. But the companies cannot issue return tickets because all the homeward accommodation in May is booked up.

The only alternative for these travellers is to find accommodation for the return journey in foreign ships, returning to Europe next spring. It has been estimated that over £4,000,000 will be withdrawn from Australian banks alone, to be spent by travellers in London who are attending the Coronation celebrations. The Union Castle Line and othef, companies which deal with Empire trade and passengers have full bookings for the homeward voyages in May, 1937. This will produce a flood of passengers into England which will turn Empire shipping in that month into a form of "one-way traffic."