NEW LINER SERVICE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22917, 21 December 1937, Page 12

NEW LINER SERVICE

The decision of the Shaw Savill and Albion Line to open to the Southern Hemisphere a fast new shipping service that will directly link South Africa, Australia and New Zealand is-of the highest importance, particularly to New Zealand. Incidentally the inference may be drawn that the new service may represent part of the provision Britain is making against a day when essential food supplies may have to be carried, on account of interruption, by the Atlantic route. At all events the famous Line is not taking half measures. The motorliner, which is to be given the pleasing name of Dominion Monarch, is to be of 27,000 gross register, 1000 tons greater than the figure announced earlier, will have accommodation for 525 one-class passengers, and probably more than 500,000 cubic feet of cold storage space, part of it being designed for the transport of chilled beef. With a speed of 19j knots or over, it is expected that the vessel will be able to make the voyage from England to Xew Zealand in 35 days after allowing for calls at Madeira and Teueriffe, Capetown and Durban, Fremantle, Melbourne and Sydney. Capetown will be reached in 14 days, 42 hours will be occupied in the run to Durban, and from there Fremantle will be reached in nine and a-half days. New Zealand has long suffered owing to the absence of a direct service from South Africa. Through the necessity of travellers to tranship at Sydney or Melbourne the journey has usually occupied too long a time to allow a tourist traffic to be built up the two countries, and the restriction that such a connection places on freight trade is obvious. It is fortunate that the needs of the farthest Dominion tit in so well with the general Imperial plans of the company, the Hag of which was well known in the Southern Atlantic before the Panama C&nal was opened.