AMERICAN LINERS SEVER LINK WITH AUCKLAND PORT

Wanganui Chronicle, 4 August 1948, Page 5

AMERICAN LINERS SEVER LINK WITH AUCKLAND PORT

(P.A.) Auckland. Aug. 3. When the grey wartime built steamer, Marina Phoenix, drew away from Queen’s Wharf this afternoon the last link was severed for an indefinite period with American passenger liners which have served the South Pacific trade for many years on charter to the Matson Line since the end ot 1946, the Marine Phoenix will be handed tack to the United States Maritime Commission at the completion of net present voyage to San Francisco. The company has no plans as yet for the future service. “There is no likelihood of the liners Mariposa and Monterey returning to the service to New Zealand and Australia,” said Mr. Earl D. Walker, passenger traffic manager of the Oceanic Steamship Company in Sydney, who passed through Auckland in the Marine Phoenix. Both vessels were now 16 years old and increasing costs had made their reconstruction an uneconomic proposition. They had now been offered to the Maritime Commission. He said the Mariposa was 60 per cent reconstructed and the Monterey 30 per cent, but the American Government would not give the company a subsidy foi refitting them. I* addition, an operational subsidy eft each ship would finish in four yeenx whereas if the company built new ships it would receive on each one a 50 per cent, construction subsidy, and a 20-year operational suubsidy. A big factor weighing against the resumption of the South Pacific service was shortage of dollars which made pleas sure travel to the American very difficult. and another was the slow turn round of ships in Australian and New Zealand ports. The company's passenger departments in Sydney and Melbourne had now closed down, and there was no indication when they would reooen. A cargo service with four freighters each of which could carry 12 passengers would be continued.