THE SAN FRANCISCO MAIL SERVICE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13837, 26 February 1907, Page 4

THE SAN FRANCISCO MAIL SERVICE.

The business community will have learned with considerable satisfaction that the apparent abandonment on the part of the Oceanic Steamship Company of any attempt to maintain a time-table for the conveyance of mails to and from San Francisco has led to further action of a decisive character on the part of the Government. The recent irregularities of this service hare been of a most vexatious kind. A mail for the United States and tho Continent of Europe via tlio Californjan route should, if the schedule of dates had been adhered to, have been despatched from Dnncdin on Tuesday last. In reliance upqn this mercantile firms refrained- from sending their correspondence by the Federal service, us they might have done, by a mail that left the colony a day earlier than that mentioned. Their confidence jn the San Francisco service was sadly misplaced. First of all, the date of despatch from Uimedin was put hack one week, and before the expiry of that week it was notified that the departure of the mail stennier would be postponed for another fortnight, the effect being that one mail has been dropped, since the service ig purported to-be a threeweekly one. It even .seems doubtful whether tlio .steamer which should have left Auckland on the 22nd inst. will be ready to take up her running three weeks after that date, for the Acting-Postmaster-general has ascertained that the withdrawal of the vessel from the service will be so lepgtjry that the posi-.

tion can, he says, only bo met by the company substituting a chartered vessel. The present interruption in the service has been exceedingly aggravating, but it merely represents tho climax to a series of failures to observe fho timetable dates, this having, moreover, been specially marked since the period at which Parliament authorised the Government to renew tho contract with the Oceanic Company, It was on the 20th October last that the mail resolutions were passed in the Lower House, and it is instructive to notice how ludicrously erratic the service has been ever since that date. The following comparison of the time-table dates for arrival of the mail steamers at Auckland with the actual dates of arrival will illustrate this from ono point of view: — Schedule Actual Steamer. . date. date. Ventura ... Nov. 1 ... Nov. 19 Sierra '. Nov. 21 ... Dec. 7 .. Doc. 12 ... No mnil Sonoma .Tim. 2 ... Jan. 20 Ventura lan. 23 ... Feb. 12 The comparison of tho time-table dates for the despatch of the mails from Auckland with tho actual dates of departure of the steamers is not less interesting: — fiolicdiilfl Arlnnl Sl-oameiv ' chile dale. Nov. 9 ... Kodespitoli Sonoma X«v. 30 ... lire, 1, Ventura Dec. 21 .. Dec. 22 Sifirrn .lan. 11 ... .Inn. 12 Si.mima Veb. 1 ... TVIi. 7 I'Vli. 22 ... NodospalcK From Ibe comparative table of outward despatches it will be scon that in thn case of three mails the time-table dates were observed or as good as observed, lint this was preceded, by the omission of a mail altogether in November, and, after a relapse to unpunctuality in respect of the despatch at the beginning of this mouth, it lias now been succeeded by the omission of another mail, two mails being dropped out of a schedule of six sailings. Even where tbfi mail has been despatched from Auckland upon the scheduled date it has evidently been found impossible to lnnd it in England at the duo date, the Ventura's mail in December having been eight days late upon its arrival in London. Now", it is obvious that tho value of a mail service is dependent very largely upon regularity'of despatch and of delivery, and the haphazard fashion in which the San Francisco service has been conducted for some months past has rendered it distinctly less valuable to the colony than the service via Suez. The fortnightly service by the latter route is, as the Acting-Postmaster-general says, running with complete regularity, and, though the period of transit may he a fow days longer than that which is supposed to Lβ occupied on the Californian route, the fact.that the mails via Suez are almost invariably landed in London on the due date, if not in advance of it, constitutes an important argument in its favour. The business community will, consequently, we are sure, view with approval the action of the Government in notifying the Oceanic Company that unless a substitute vessel is provided for the Ventura, now in dock in Sydney, no English mails will be despatched by the San Vranciscp route until the servicelias been put on a proper footing and it can be shown that the steamers themselves are capable of keeping time-table dates.