AN EXTRAORDINARY FEAT.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XX, Issue 1414, 21 December 1887, Page 5

AN EXTRAORDINARY FEAT.

Following upon the telegraphic report of an extraordinary trip made by the P. and O. Company's new steamer Victoria to Bombay (says the." Argus") comes the wonderful voyage of the Orient Company's Ormuz, which has just reached Adelaide after the fastest run on record. The Ormuz has sailed from Suez t6 Adelaide at a rate much faster than the average speed of railway trains on most of our lines, and nearly as fast as on the main lines, and she has landed the mails hours before another magnificent ship — tbe Carthage — whose mails left London a week previously. It is when we see theje results' that we can guage the improvements ma.de.j within recent years in ship and marine engine building. Very few .years ago. a 51 days' run was the talk of the day, and w.hen the St. Osyth came bitberwards and placed us in possession of letters six weeks old, it was thought that nothing better could be done. Year after year, however, the record was. beaten and now we have such vessels runuing as the Ormuz, wbiqh can lacd mails iv 2H days from London, the Victoria, the Oroya, the Britannia, and the Orizaba, which are making or will make jfche voyage to Australia almost equal in knots per hour to voyages across th« Atlantic. Such good steamers as the Orient, Carthage, Austral, and Rome, though new,' are becoming by comparison prematurely old, and the fleeter palaces which now plough the seas will merely have their day. Of course there must be a limit to record breaking, but how far or how near that limit may be, cannot of course be stated. The present and prospective advantages may be more clearly estimated. In the first place, we are very likely to have a much faster mail service than is to be actually stipulated for in the contract to be signed within the next few days or weeks. If we had insisted on delivery within 28 days, the companies would have demanded larger subsidies, but we are promised this service without undue cost. Competition for passenger traffic apart from the natural rivalry between two great proprietaries, will operate to our advantage in this respect, and bring us into much closer communication with kith and kin across the water.