BRITAIN’S SHIPPING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25674, 24 October 1944, Page 2

BRITAIN’S SHIPPING

POST-WAR FLEET “GREATEST EXPORT INDUSTRY” “Britain’s greatest export industry, greater in volume than either coal, cotton, steel, engineering, pottery, or anything else ” —that is the importance given to British merchant shipping in the post-war struggle for recovery by Sir Archibald Hurd, probably the world’s most authoritative writer on questions of naval and merchant shipping, in an article in Empire News. “To live, we must have ships,’’ says Sir Archibald. “ For many years we have bought more goods from overseas than we have sold. There has been what is called an adverse balance on- our trading account with other nations. In the year before the opening of, the war it amounted to no less than £376,700,000. In other words, we ran into debt to overseas customers to the tune of upwards of £1,000,000 every day. “That we managed to wipe out or nearly wipe out that debt was mainly due to the income—£2oo,ooo,ooo each year—on our foreign investments and the gross earnings—not profits—of shipping in overseas trading, which reached the high figure of £100,000,000 in 1938, and in some prosperous years the income was more than three times as large. . „ ~ “That brings us to the core of the problem of the restoration of shipping. We have surrendered most of our foreign investments in paying for the war, and we have lost in the common cause half of our ships. It must be some time before we can sell as many goods as we were selling in 1938. It must be even longer before we can save sufficient money to replace the foreign investments which have been surrendered, if indeed we can ever do so. So shipping as an export industry, greater in volume than either coal, cotton, steel, engineering, pottery, or anything else, has become more vital than ever before.” Sir Archibald Hurd believes that, however rigorously she may restrict purchases from other' countries, Britain cannot sell sufficient goods to pay for her essential imports, and that however efficient her farmers may be they cannot supply move than half her food requirements. He estimates that at the end of the war the United States will have at sea three times Britain’s tonnage of merchant ships, and other countries are determined to have more tonnage on the trade routes than before the war. ■ . A post-war ship will cost about twice as much as a pre-war ship. That means that the insurance money which •has been paid for the ships which have been sunk, will not be sufficient to meet the cost of the new ones, and, in addition, there are hundreds of ships which have been worn out by exacting war service and must be replaced.