PROPOSED NEW STEAM LINES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9163, 19 September 1888, Page 5

PROPOSED NEW STEAM LINES.

A BIG AMERICAN PROJECT.

The following is an extract from a letter received by the Alameda by a gentleman in this city from a friend, a commercial man in San Francisco. The plan proposed is a very great one. New Zealand, and especially Auckland, are ignored, and left out in the cold, and we should then have to depend on the Union S.S. Co- for the delivery and despatch of our European and American mails. Ere the plan is developing, however, it is more than probable that the P. and O. and Orient Companies will have extended their lines to this colony, so that we shall not be cut off altogether from direct communication with the outer world.

Sir Saul Samuel recently went north to interview the Canadian Post-office officials as to the probability of a subsidy for a line of steamers from Vancouver to Sydney. I think it exceedingly likely that with the assistance of a subsidy from the English Government, and what New South Wales may be willing to give, such a line may be accomplished. A very effective ocean service is now being run between Vancouver, Yokohama, and Hongkong, calling in at San Francisco both ways, and cutting very largely into the business of the Pacific Mail Co. If lam rightly informed, the line is owned by John Elder and Co., or properly speaking Mr. Pearce, the late owner of the Zealandia. I should not be at all surprised if he is quite able to run a line of steamers as required by the New Zealand people, giving San Francisco the £o-by, and making it quite an independent route. In the meantime the Postmaster-General at Washington has bccoine stirred up about the matter, and, according to the morning's papers, has intimated to the New Zealand Government that this country will contribute the whole of the postal receipts towards the maintenance of the line, amounting to between 47,000 and 50,000 dollars. A public meeting is about to be called at the Chamber of Commerce in this city, remonstrating against the probability of the line being withdrawn, and asking the United States postal authorities to contribute more liberally towards its maintenance. I hope to have something to say in the matter while the meeting is in session, and will go in for something very much better than anything the service has yet seen. In my opinion the United States Govern ment is sufficiently wealthy aad powerful to commence a general subsidy scheme for the maintenance of ocean steam routes the world over, and I shall advocate not only the continuance of the Australian line, but that it shall be conducted and operated by steamers of from 6000 to 10,000 tons burden; having a service between San Francisco and Sydney direct, avoiding Honolulu and Auckland, thus saving a distance something like 1100 miles. That these steamers shall make a speed of something like 18 knots per hour, making the distance in about fifteen days, and at rates of saloon passage £25 from Sydney to San Francisco : £10 by rail from San Francisco to New York and £12 from New York to Liverpool ; ; hat they shall be commanded by Americans only, and shall carry cadets in large lumbers with a view to create a marine ■orvice second to nothing in the world. I hall perhaps go further than that if this 'heme is entertained favourably, and it -hall be the beginning only of a steam service which shall in time cover the ocean outes of the world with steamers carrying he Stars and Stripes. My idea would be to subsidise steamers so liberally that this service, beginning at San Francisco, should ■ lossess steamers enough to go the world • >und, from this port to Sydney, Melbourne, Colombo, Suez, Malta, Gibraltar, Southampton, and New York, and from Vew York back again to San Francisco, ia the same route, cutting into the business jf the P. and O. Co., and all the )ther steam lines running to Austraia with steamers of the tonnage indicated, making no less than 18 knots per hour, commanded by American seamen, making such competition with the English lines as would drive a number of them from the face of the ocean, bringing to Sati Francisco, if possible, all the colonial passenger traffic, having another line from San Francisco via Yokohama and Hongkong, meeting these steamers at Colombo and cutting into the business of the P. and O. from China and the East Indies ; operating also a line of steamers from New York to San Francisco and vice versa, down the coast of North and South America and through the Straits of Magellan, taking in all the South American business on both sides, and carrying it to New York and San Francisco, and I think it very likely that some such scheme will be favourably entertained by the next Congress, which is likely to be largely Republican, especially if our candidates, Harrison and Morton, are elected.

The subsidy would have to be not less than ten millions of dollars per annum, but if the scheme can be carried out it would make the competition against English steam lines very interesting. You will understand from this that there is not any Free Trade nonsense about me, and that I am an out-and-out American. I do not. know how this will go down with some of my friends in Auckland, but I shall advocate this scheme strongly if I have an opportunity when the Chamber of Commerce meets to discuss the question. I have mentioned it privately to two or three gentlemen, and they are astounded at the audacity of the scheme. "Whether it goes through or not I shall have an opportunity of ventilating some very pronounced ideas upon the subject. These steamers would be entirely built in the United States, and constructed so as to be available in case of war ; and if there is a continuance of the unsettled condition of Europe, which to-day is really an armed campßussia, Germany, Austria, France, and Italy, with their hundreds of thousands of armed men held in tho leash waiting to spring at each others' throats ; and when this general European war shall come, which it is hardly possible to avoid ; although I hope dear old England may be kept out of it, I think it is most likely when her enemies approach Constantinople she will bo very likely to take a hand in the row, then will bo the opportunity for the United States to take advantage of these idea of a subsidised steam service over all the ocean routes of the world ; and, again, that the Stars and Stripes will be found in every shipping port of any prominence the world over. I think some of our statesmen are sufficiently progressive to give some importance to this, and take time by the forelock.