OBSOLETE SHIPS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20958, 22 August 1931, Page 11

OBSOLETE SHIPS.

FOREIGN SALE WRONG. STATE OF THE INDUSTRY. 1 Am aspect .of ih» ; - 4 prevailing eeonomio depression as it affeets tie shipping industry was referred to at the annual gathering g! Wellington master mariners by Captain W. -Stuart {of the Marina Department), who. criticised the practice! of selling obsolete tonnage "to foreign buyers daring temporary slackness in tra.de. Traversing the principal features of British shipping during the. past tTselva months. Captain Stnart said thai two and s-half million tons of shipping were sew lying idle, and SDJ3QD British seamen were' unemployed and practically dependent upon State relief. "We have got to faca this appalling fact, 1 * ha said,, "and we. ss the NW Zealand master 'mariners, have also to ask what is the cause -and what is the remedy. "Firstly, we have the craestion of obsolete tonnage. Shipping companies to-day ara prone to think that the fact thai they get rid of a dozen or mors of their ships to foreign hovers, more particularly; Eastern buyers, is rood Business. , I sav it is not good BnsSiess; it is. a. mistake. What do we find ? They say that by getting rid cf a dozen 'old crocks* they caa get two or three new ships.. ' They forget that the Eastern bnysrs ran those ships* with cheap labonr, and ran ihara against their former owners. ""'This policy a -all wasrag. We want onr fleets kept, intact daring : this ' ecoJ comic depression., and at the end of Jt j sot find them running with fsreiga or - J' Eastern crews.*'-