Danube Transport

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 305, 27 December 1939, Page 3

Danube Transport

GERMANY’S SUPPLY PROBLEM LONDON, Dec. I. Recent reports suggest that the Nazis have underestimated the task of transporting supplies from .South-Eastern Europe by water, their rolling stock being notoriously in bad condition and inadequate, states the Times. In view of German interest in these supplies—among them oil from Rumania —an article published some time ago in the Wiener Tagblatt is illuminating: — The principal and constant drawback of the Danube, the writer said, lies in the rocks and rapids at the Iron Gate, where the river debouches from the Hungarian into the Moldavian Plain. Only craft with a tonnage of 600 tons and under can negotiate this defile. A secondary obstacle is the bar at Sulina, where the only navigable channel of the Danube issues into the Black Sea. Only vessels drawing less than 10ft. of water can pass it. There are a number of- big 1000-ton barges employed ou the Lower Danube, but their cargoes have to be transhipped at Turnu .Scverin, below the Iron Gates, if they are destined for ports up-river. The fleet of barges which can navigate the river throughout its course is international in character and includes German, Czechoslovak, Hungarian, Yugoslav, Rumanian, British, French aud Dutch companies. The British and French fleets have now been withdrawn from the throughgoing traffic, and are laid up at Sulina. The writer, reckoning German-control-led and neutral companies together, estimates that Germany can count on a fleet of 1249 barges, with an aggregate tonnage of 793,200 tons for general cargoes, and 165 tank-barges and 19 motor-tankers for the oil traffic. Considering that the return voyage from Giurgiu, the Rumanian oil port, to Vienna takes an average of 30 days, he thinks that this is far from sufficient for the call which is likely to be made on the river traffic. He says that the German Government is considering transferring some of the Rhine barges now laid up to the Danube, but here again he remarks that their transfer by rail will be a slow and arduous business, and that by no means all the Rhino barges are suitable for work on the Danube.