POST-WAR TRAVEL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26226, 9 August 1946, Page 7

POST-WAR TRAVEL

FACILITIES FOR PASSENGERS LESS TIME ON JOURNEY The reconversion of large passenger vessels from troopships to their normal condition as civilian passenger carriers cannot be indefinitely delayed without serious inconvenience to the general public. Only a very limited number of ships has been released and sent to the yards to refit. The Orion, which the Orient Line hopes to sail for Australia in November of this year, is the first of the line’s four surviving vessel: to be under refit. 4 In the Australian trade she will be the harbinger of tin post-war passenger fleet. etails received from London of the passenger accommodation in the Orioi and the generally similar accommoda tion to be fitted in the new 29,000-toi. Orcades, which is the first large passenger ship to be laid down since 1939, are interesting as being perhaps the first clear indication of post-war conditions of sea travel between England and Australia. Saloon and Tourist Class Both the Orion and the Orcades will carry first saloon and tourist B class passengers. The Orion will be refitted to take 550 in the first saloon, instead of 480 pre-war, and 750 in tourist B. instead of 550 in the tourist class previously. The Orcades will carry 740 in first saloon and 780 in tourist B. The annual contributions to the overcoming of the passenger accommodation shortage, which is bound to exist for some years, will be 5200 berths in the Orion and 6000 in the Orcades in either direction, as against, for example, 3100 in the Orion before the war. These figures will be achieved by running the ships faster and possibly also by omitting some of fhe customary ports of call, sc that they should each make four insteav of three voyages a year. Quick loadin and discharge in the time available i port wifi be a vital factor. A fair proportion of the Orion’s accon modation will be fitted in its pre-war co> dition, but, in order to make the amenitn of the first class available to a larger sec tion of the public than ever before, an so to fit incomes restricted by taxatio/ a wide variation in type of cabins ha: been planned. This will extend froir cabins with private bathroom at the top level to a comfortable type of cabin closely akin to the pre-war tourist cabin in size and amenity at the lower end of the scale. Tourist B class cabins will be fitted to provide reasonable comfort at maximum economy. Their amenities will include provision in most cases of hot and cold running water. The cardinal consideration leading to the post-war departure by the Orient Line from the successful design of the 1937 Orcades, lost during the war, is the steep rise in building and running costs. A general advance in wages and materials is responsible for this. The new Orcades will cost £2,500,000, two and a-half times as much as her predecessor, including the extra cost of increase from 23.000 to 29,000 tons. The next important factor is the reduction in earning power of the ship, due.to more spacious living quarter* being provided for the crew. The area per man has gone up roughly 40 per cent. The total crew in the Orcades will be 576„ against 466 in her pre-war namesake. The result of the Improved crew space in the Orcades represents space in which about 200 passengers could have been accommodated. Larger and Faster Ships

Another factor is the likelihood that the public, under heavy taxation for some years to come, will be unable to afford the relative increases in fares which would be justified by the rises in costs. If the movement of people between Australia and New Zealand and the United Kingdom is to be unfettered, fares must be kept down to the lowest possible level, and that is one objective that has guided design. The answer, therefore, is to carry more people in each ship and so provide a wider spread for overheads, and to carry them at greater speed and so make a more intensive use of the ship. To achieve these objects, a bigger ship is required, and the embodiment of these ideas in the post-war Orcades, plus her largely increased pre-fabrication, forward steps in steam generation, incorporation of radar and other modern developments, mark her as a new type of great interest overseas as well as in Australia and New Zealand.

On top of the problems of increased cost of building and running and the need to keep fares down, travel by sea has up against it the lure of speed by an. The ship voyage will be greatly speeded up by the new service speed of 22J knots, reducing the time from Melbourne to London to 28 Instead of the pre-war 36 days; and a combination of air and sea travel, using air to Fremantle and from Egypt to London, would reduce the overall journey to 17 days.