PROBLEM OF BRITISH SHIPPING

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 162, 3 April 1919, Page 6

PROBLEM OF BRITISH SHIPPING

PRE-WAR STATUS AND.PRESENT OUTLOOK GERMAN KNAVERY RECALLED (By Sydnoy Brooks, in the "Westminster . ' Gazette.")

' With the return of peace tho problem of British shipping engages, and deserves to engage, the thoughts of those who realise all that the mercantile marine has been to the Kingdom and the Empire in the past, and all that it may b<s in tho future, and indeed must be, if our prosperity is not to be robbed of one of its main props. Lord Inchcopo did not exaggerate whon in a recent letter to the "Times" he declared that the merchant marine is to British commerce what coal is to Britisn industry- Jlcns minde have been much exercised during the war over questions of key industries and raw materials. 'But for us in Bnt-nin-an island kingdom with a worldwide trade and a world-wide Empire, (taring our physical and our manufacturing' sustenance from all the ends ot the earth-there is no key industry so fundamental as shipping, there are no raw materials so indispensable as ships. Ships link into a connected whole the ■scattered parts .of tho Empire as railT/ovs link tho provinces tof a Continental State; they lay the whole globe under tribute that we in these Elands may have the means to maintain life and to manufacture goods; they are the cause and origin of that stn-powor which is tho supreme expression of tho British .eenius—a sea-power that is only halt appreciated when it <3 reckoned in terms of Dreadnoughts, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, and not also in terms ot trampsi Jincrs, colliers, and tankers; and no substitute is in eight, or is even conceivable, that will take tho place thev have held in the national and Imperial economy. It was not. therefore chance or a fad, but a sound instinct ot self-preservation acting on a natural seafaring gift, and stimulating the habit of commercial enterprise that made the British mercantile marine the largest, the most up-to-date :md the most eihcient of all the merchant navies of the world. Nearly one-liaif of all the steam tonnage afloat in 19U was Bruishowned. Our Rival, Germany.

Germany was our nearest and most formidable rival, but the German mercantile marine was less than a fourth, the size of oure; and, apart from Germany, there was not a single , country with even a tenth of the number of the steam vessels under the British flag. .Numbers, however, wero very far from being the only advantage we possessed. The general character of the British mercantile marine, no less than its size, put it ina, class by itself. When the war broke out fully 80 per cent, of the tonnage of the United Kingdom was made up of oceau-going vessels ot lbW) tons and over. In other words, its carrying capacity was quite exceptionally high. It had, too, tue further advantage of speed. Germany, although her oversea trade was carried on pre-emin-ently by liners, had barely more than n fifth of the number of our own 12-knot-and-over vessels, and the proportion that these ships bore to her total tonnage was only 23 per cent., while in our case it was 35 per cent. But what told even more heavily in favour of the British merchant navy was its modernity, its up-to-dateness, its high percentage of ships of recent construction, the velocity at which it maintained a constant process ot renewal and replacement. Our mercantile marine was always the youngest.gn the seas. As vessels grew old and obsolete for British purposes and iell below British standards of efficiency, they were transferred to foreign flngs, and their places taken by newly-built ships.. At the outbreak of the war we found ourselves witfi a merchant navy 68 per cent, of-which had been built since ISOO and 11 per cent, since 1905. i'onth, size, numbers, speed, carrying capacity, and -Virtue shipbuilding facilities—at all these vital points -we wero easily supreme; and they were enormously reinforced by the unapproachable experience, seamanship, and sense of tradition that, permeated the whole'body of over 200,000 officers a-d men. i A Vast Armada.

This vast Armadti ejrried before the war over half of the total sea-borne trade of the world. Gf the inter-Imperial trade-the trade, that is to say, between the United . Kingdom and tho British oversea possessions, and also between tiie oversea possessions themselves— its share was 92 per cent. Of the trade ■ between the United Kingdom and foreign countries and between the oversea possessions and foreign countries, 63 per cent, was borne in British vessels; and they also carried 30 per cent, of the trade between the non-British regions of tho earth. Nothing could be more eloquent than these figures of tho unique position held, by Great Britain as the industrial centre of a vast Empire, drawing its foodstuffs and raw materials from every quarter of the globe, and forced by its insular situation to project its activities far beyond Europe irlo the most distant markets. Not only did 54 per cent, of all commerce by tea begin or end within the British Empire, but 40 per cent, of it originated in, or was destined for, the ports of the United Kingdom alone. With-the sea ss our only frontiers, with an Empire that had strewn the ocean routes with coaling stations and ports of call, and with a commercial policy that ensured for the shipping industry low costs of construction and operation, and that made iron and froquent access to all markers a first necessity, wo rose by what might almost have seemed a natural process to be easily tho chief carriers and tho chief shipbuilders of the world. In the four years preceding the war the average output, of tho British yards was 01 per cent, of tho total world construction, While we mono-

polised no ocean, and iicet .competitors on nil, none of them had succeeded in nibbling awnv move than the fringe here and there of British supremacy. Our geographical situation, the extent n,nd excellence of ou.r yards, n trade as wide as the universe, an ingrained seafaring instinct, and the powessjon and export of vof=t and bulky.supplies of,coal had won for us a position in the shinpin? business that was not only unrivalled but in many ways unapproachable. The Suez Canal is still a rough-and-ready test of international maritime activity. In 191.1 a little over GO. per chnt. of Hie vessels that passed through it were British. On no eea, however, wns competition lacking. In the European and Mediterranean trades we had to meet the rivalry of tKe Germans, the Dutch, and the Scandinavians, and in the ocean trades the Germans and the Dutch were übiquitously ajfijressive. The twelve years previous to the outbreak of tho war had seen a very great increase' of Germany's ovcr&u trade and si corresponding development of her merchant service. Her imports by 6ea in 1913 were very little less in volume than tho imports into the United Kingdom. Her exports by sea were, however, only one-fourth of' tho weight of ours, and her total sea-borne trade did not amount in value to moro than two-fifths of that of tho British Empiro. Neorly half of Germany's shipping, was engaged in tlie Baltic, European, and Mediterranean trade, about a third in the American trade, and slightly over a tenth in the Middle and Par Eas'.ern trades. Ten closely associated and powerfully-organ-ised lines, with over 3,000,000 gross tonnage, owned CO per cent, of Germany's shipping and controlled most of (he remainder. The German marine was essentially a liner fleet, in which the passenger olomcnt was fIU-imnui-tant, and its main strength, despite its world-wide activities, was concentrated in the Atlantic trades. It is worth notiug that over n third of the movement of German shipping in overseas commerce found one of ill terminals within the British Empire.

German Knavery. What ereatly helped the Germans in establishing themselves in the Atlantic route was their control of a large proportion of the emigrant traffic to the United States, a traffic which is tho backbone of the fast Atlantic services. Before tho war some 2,000,000 emigrants -most of them from Italy, Austria-Hun-gary and Russia—were every year crossing' the Atlantic' to moke their homes

in North and South America, flic Germans KOt the lion's shave of tlio business into their hands by a pieeo of characteristic trickery. In 18M, after an outbreak of tlie cholera in Russia, they established Control stations at the frontier to prevent the spread of the disease into Germany. These Control stations were "radually converted into a powerful weapon for deflecting; the flow of Russian nnd Soulh-Eaetern emigration to German lines. Tlio emigrants wcro forced to travel by the German lines, on pain of being refused transit; the stations became in reality shipping ngencies, with tho full knowledge and connivance of the German Government; and with this great asset in their keeping the German shipping companies lnouglit an exlracudinary pressure to bear on their competitors, and were able to make' a sustnined and serious bid for the supremacy of the Atlantic. In .1913 they earned half of all the third-class passengers who left Europe including the United Kingdom, for the United States and Canada. Their hold over the -mst volume oi : traffic was cumulative in its effects. U formed the basis of the prosperity of their Atlantic trades, and this prosperity reacted on tho whole body of German shipping, and enabled the German lines to start cargo services for political reasons, nnd to open" up new business in other trades by systematic rate-cutting vith a 'security and that otherwise would have been unobtainable, That much of Germany's success in shipping was legitimate and deserv.ed, and sprang from the closer and more intelligent alliance between tho Government and industry, from a preferential system of through railway rates, ,md from tho better organisation of the ■shipping interests as a whole, is incontestable. But that much also was the outcome of tho abuse of tho Control system, and of a ready disregard of Conference agreements, is likewise not open, to doubt. A Dart from Germany, our chief rivals in the European and Mediterranean trades were the Scandinavian shipowners, who operated on a, much ■ lower schedule both of wages :ind expenses. In the Central and South American and West Indian trades the Dutch, the Danes, the Italians, and the French wore all active, while in tho Far East, and even in the Indian coasting trade, the Japanese lines, heavily subsidised by their Government, were formidably aggressive. But with it nil the British mercantile marine remained easily supreme, the greatest of :ili international utilities, and the most remarkable qf all the triumphs of British enterprise,.