SHIPBUILDING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20355, 12 March 1928, Page 12

SHIPBUILDING.

GROUNDS FOR REJOICING. GREAT INCREASE IN TONNAGE. MORE MOTOR VESSELS. (From Our. Own Correspondent.) LONDON, January 17. After a severe depression lasting over two years and a-half, shipbuilding in Great Britain at the 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 200,0C0 tons now building in this country were for registration in the British Dommons, and nearly 200,000 tons were intended for foreign ship owners. Abroad there wore 1,559,008 tons under construction, Germany leading with 472,285 tons, which was considerably more than double the tonnage building in that country at the end of December, 1926. Other countries which had more than 100,'000 tons under construction wore— Italy, 183,216; Holland. 174.887; France, 115,029; and Sweden, 100,700. Ship owners 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 shops accounted lor 652,894 tons (over 41 per cent, of the total building), while abroad the motor ship tonnage reached 856,994 (over 62 per cent, of the total). The world figures for motor ships—-1,609,833 tons—exceeded by 115,556 tons the total for steam tonnage. LIKE OLD TIMES. This,” says the Daily Express, in a leading article, “is like old times, and for three reasons it is as welcome as any new;, could be. One is that in building a ship an immense proportion of the cost — well over three fourths—goos in wages. Another is that shipbuilding cannot prosper without benefiting at the same time a large number of subsidiary industries, and these, for the most part, the very ndustn'cs that during the past five years have been most depressed. The third ground for rejoicing is that the British mercantile marine is clearly becoming again what it was before the War, not only the largest on the ocean, but the fastest and the most modern. About a fourth of the orders we were fulfilling last year were on foreign account, am! that again is a wholly reassuring sign. It means that the dominions and South America and the Continent, while retaining their old faith in the superiority of British workmanship, no longer hesitate because of costs or tho fear of labour troubles to place ther orders in British yards. Shipbuilding during tho war and as a consequence of the war had to yield much. It is now getting it back again with interest.”