DIRECT STEAM COMMUNICATION WITH GREAT BRITAIN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 2976, 8 January 1881, Page 4

DIRECT STEAM COMMUNICATION WITH GREAT BRITAIN.

The time is coming when direct steam communication between Great Britain and New Zealand will be an established fact, by a regular line of powerful steamships plying between the two places. A well known shipping authority, in a speecli made at Liverpool some time ago, at a meeting held in connection with the Atlantic lines, said that before long steamers would be built to cross the Atlantic of 10,000 tons burden, and averaging a speed of 21 knots to the hour. Should the prediction be fulfilled we should, in the long run, have similar steamers running between London and New Zealand. It was a pet project of Mr Macandrew, when he held the portfolio of Minister of Public Works, to have a line of steamer? established to run between London and New Zealand. All sorts of practical information was obtained on the subject, and had times kept good, we doubt not the scheme would have been carried out. Apropos of tins sxibject, "Anglo-Australia," in the European Mail, states that one of the managers of the Orient Company, speaking at a banquet on board of the Orient, foreshadowed the idea of 10,000 ton steamers running between London and the Australasian Colonies. "A steamer of 10,000 tons," "AngloAustralia" remarks, "would be a floating castle indeed, and a speed of 21 knots an hour a consideration, for at this rat 6 New York would be within six days of Liverpool and London, the Cape within fifteen days, and Australia and New Zealand about twenty-nine or thirty days. The cost of propulsion would probably be put very little in excess of what it is now in a 3000 or 4000 ton ship, for there can be no doubt that the experience of engineers would be equal—what with compound engines and other contrivances —to effecting a considerable saving in the cost of fuel. It is needless to say that such a revolution in ocean-going steamships as is here siiggested, Iβ one that should engage the earnest attention of capitalists and others in the colonies, as one which will have [an important bearing upon Ihe meat and other industries. — New Zealand Times.