SHIPS AND SUBMARINES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23320, 13 April 1939, Page 10

SHIPS AND SUBMARINES

The safety of merchant shipping and the maintenance of regular ocean services in case of war are two things very close to New Zealand's most vital interests. The questions on the point put in Wellington yesterday to Mr. W. R. Spence, general secretary of the British National Union of Seamen, and his answers to them, are very pertinent to the subject. In the first place Mr. Spence suggested, though he did not assert dogmatically, that the fewer large ships, which are replacing the great pre-war fleet of smaller merchant, vessels, were less open to submarine attack. That may be so. It can also be accepted that the smaller number and higher speeds of these great merchant ships would make the convoy method less complicated. On the other side of the scale, it must be remembered that the loss of one unit would be much more serious, threatening the maintenance of full shipping services in these days of big ships than the loss of a single cargo vessel was during the war. However, Mr. Spence was able to speak a reassuring word about the development of anti-submarine defences by the British Navy. This was a point strongly emphasised by Mr. Geoffrey Shakespeare, Financial Secretary to the Admiralty, when he introduced the Navy Estimates in the House of Commons last month. "I cannot reveal the nature and extent of our progress in tljis respect," he said, "but I believe that our methods of detecting, hunting, and killing submarines are more advanced than any others in the world. . . . Proved success of convoy and development of scientific methods of detection put us in a better position to face this menace." To all those who remember how near the Empire was brought to defeat in the last war by the submarine, those words have a comforting ring.