BRITISH SHIPBUILDING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19882, 28 February 1928, Page 7

BRITISH SHIPBUILDING

FINE RECOVERY IN IM7. _ MORE THAN REST OF WORLD. OTHER TRADES BENEFIT. [FROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT. ] LONDON, Jan. 17. After a severe depression lasting over two years and a-half shipbuilding in Great Britain at tha end of December amounted to 1,579,713 tons, or more than the combined tonnage building in the rest of the World. According to Lloyd's Registry of Shipping, over 200,000 tons now building in this country were for registration in the British Dominions and nearly 200,000 tons were intended for foreign'shipowners.

Abroad there were 1,539,008 jtona under construction, Germany leading with 472,395 tons, which was considerably more than double the tonnage building in that cotmtry at the end of December, 1926. Other countries which had more than 100.000 tons under construction were: —• Italy, 183,216; Holland, 174,887; France, 115,029; and Sweden, 100,700.

Shipowners tend more and more to the internal combustion engine, although to a much larger extent abroad than here. Of the total under construction in Great Britain and Ireland, motor ships accounted for 652,894 tons (over 41 per cent, of the total building), while abroad the niotorship tonnage reached 956,994 (over 62 per cent, of the total). The world figures for motorships —1,609,888 tons —exceeded by 115,356 tons the total for steam tonnage. "This," savs the Daily Express, in a leading article, "is like old times, and for three reasons it is as welcome sis any news could be. One is that in building a ship an immense proportion of the ocst- — well over three-fourths—goes in wages. Another is that shipbuilding cannot prosper without benefiting at tha same time a large number of subsidiary industries, and these, for the most part, the very industries that during the past five years have been most depressed. The third ground for rejoicing is that the British mercantile marine is clearly becoming I again what it was before the war, not only the largest on the ocean, bat the fastest and the most modern. "About a fourth of the orders we were fulfilling last year were on foreign account and that again is a wliblly reassuring sign. It means that the Domin? ions and South America and the Continent, while retaining' their old faith in the superiority of British workm&rtshjp, no longer hesitate because of costs or the fear of labour troubles to place their orders in British yards. Shipbuilding during the war and as a consequence of the war had to yield much. It is now getting it back again with interest."