WORLD'S SHIPPING CENSUS

Evening Star, Issue 18121, 10 November 1922, Page 2

WORLD'S SHIPPING CENSUS

BRITAIN STILL SUPREME. [faoM Ooa London Cobbesfondent.J September 28. Lloyd’s register of shipping shows that Great Britain still maintains her mercantile supremacy with a total of 19,068,638 tons, America’s sea-going shipping holding the second place with 13,076,640 tons; while Japan has wrested the third place from France, with a total of 3,585,916 tons. The census, however, analyses the tonnage into ages, and on this basis it is immediately apparent that the advantage is definitely with the United States. Almost three-quarters of her gross tonnage has been built within the last five years. Only some 31 per cent, of British ships are under five years old. Similarly nearly 20 per cent, of the British mercantile marine is over twenty years old,_ but less* than 9 per cent, or the American. America’s most rapid development has been in the construction of vessels _ between 2,0C0 and 8,000 tons. Tho United States has built in the last fivo years over 2,000 vessels, with a tonnage of nearly 9,000,000. In the same period British shipping companies have built 762 boats, with a tonnage of under 4,000,000. These figures are the first material proof of the lesson learnt by America from , the war—that the resistance power of a nation must bo measured in time of need by the strength of its mercantile marine. Subsidies alone, of course, have made possible such gigantic shipbuilding schemes.