STEAM COMMUNICATION WITH AUSTRALIA. [From the "Times."]

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 604, 28 January 1852, Page 3

STEAM COMMUNICATION WITH AUSTRALIA. [From the "Times."]

Southampton, Sept. 11. The Lords Commisiouers of the Admiralty have again, and for the fourth time, issued advertisements inviting proposals from parties willing to provide steam communication with Australia. Upon a perusal of the conditions of the contract thus put up for public competition, there unfortunately appears to be little reason for expectation that the arrangements now proposed will meet with the general approval of the public, inasmuch as the subject, instead of having been benefitted and its prospects improved by the great delay that has taken place, by the discussions which have arisen, and by the Parliamentary inquiry which was instituted during the last session, has positively suffered a retrogression of a serious character and the Admiralty now merely propose to receive tenders for a steam communication with Sydney by way of the Cape of Good Hope six times a-year, or once every two months. Whether so infrequent a conveyance of the mails will be sufficient to meet the requirements of the vast and increasing trade between this country and Australia, and in view of the material impulse which must naturally be given to the importance and extent of the traffic from the recent discovery of the precious metals in Australia, is a matter which the commercial world will have an opportunity of judging; but in the meantime perhaps the least that can be said is that the measures now proposed in the contract before us must be pronounced a petty and trivial method of carrying out a great and national object, and a course that is unworthy the energy, resources, and enterprize of Great Britain in the existing struggle for mercantile and naval supremacy. In less than a year after the discovery of gold in California the Government of the United States had organized and placed in operation two lines of magnificent ocean mail steam ships, connecting with eacli other at the Isthmus of Panama, and providing a rapid and regular means ot conveyance between New York and San Francisco, with fortnightly arrivals and departures on each sideThe contrast afforded between so prompt and vigorous a course, and the dilatory and ineffectual action of the British Government in reference to the Australian steam question, is very painful and humiliating. The English Admiralty has seemed to be utterly unable to rise supeiiorto the bickerings and jealousies of rival packet companies, or to take a plain and straigjitforTv'a.l d method of putting in operation an important line of packet communication, or to decide upon a route to the Antipodes, which should have been chosen purely upon its merits of directness, shortness, and the favourable nature of the navigation. The Admiralty moreover, it will be seen, are of opinion that packets capable of steaming eight and a half knots an hour, and to depart from England once every two months, is all that is necessary ; with the additional drawback, that the route to be pursued is the longest and which, although recommended by the committee of the House of Commons, was pronounced by the report of that committee to be the most uncertain in consequence of the description of weather always prevailing in the navigation between the Cape of Good Hope and the Australian continent. It will further be seen that New Zealand will bo entirely excluded from the intercourse by steam, from the fact of the Cape route having been selected in opposition to the route by way of Panama. j We subjoin the principal conditions upon which the tenders are to be received, and which are deliverable on the 4th December next. The contract is to continue in force for four years, and may be terminated by a notice of 12 months from either of the contracting parties. " The tenders are to be for vessels propelled by screws and they may be made either for a line of steamers between the Cape of Good Hope and Sydney, in continuation of the existing line between England and the Cape, or for a new line extending the whole way from England to Sydney. " The parties tendering are to frame their offers for two different contingencies : — " Under the first, the steamers would be required to stop at King George's Sound, Adelaide, and Port Phillip on their way to and from Sydney. " Under the second, the steamers would stop only at Port Phillip outwards, where a branch steamer, to be provided by the contractors, would take the mails and convey them to Adelaide and King George's Sound, and return to Adelaide to meet the homeward steamer. " The tenders are to state for what annual sum each of these two routes would be undertaken by iron as well as by wooden vessels ; and also the day on which the parties will be prepared to commence the service. ' "The contractors must engage to convey the mails and despatches six times in a year each I way, and will have to deliver and receive mails at King George's Sound, Adelaide and Port Phillip, and at such other places as the Loids Commissioners of the Admiralty may from time to time j determine and direct, both on the outward and homeward voyages to and from Sydney. "They must also engage to convey them at a speed which on the average of each voyage, shall not be less than 8£ knots an hour ; and as a precaution against failure in this condition, no vessel will be accepted for the performance of the contract which is not found, on trial at the measured knot on the Thames, to attain the speed of nine knots an houi*, to the satisfaction of the said commissioners, propelled by steam alone and without the aid of sails. " They must likewise engage to supply, during the continuance of the contract, vessels equal in number and size to those specified in their tender and these vessels arc to be subject at all proper times to survey by officers in the employment of the Admiralty, and any defect discovered on such survey to bo immediately made good by the contractors. This survey to extend to the crew, officers, and engineers and machinery, as well as to the hull of the vessel. " The vessels to be always supplied and furnished with all necessary and proper machinery, engiues, appaiel, furnitui'e, stores, tackle, boats, fuel, oil, tallow, provisions, anchors, cables, firepumps, and other proper means for extinguishing fire, lightning conductors, charts, chronometers, proper nautical instruments, and whatsoever else may be requisite and necessary for equipping the said vessels and rendering them constantly effi-

cient for the service to be performed, and also manned and provided with legally qualified and competent officers and a sufficient crew of able seamen and other men. " The days and hours of departure and arrival at each port are to be fixed by the said commissioners, and may be altered from time to time by them on giving a notice to the contractors of three months. "The said Commissioners are to have the power of ordering the vessels to be so arranged and constructed as to be capable of carrying with efficiency such armament as they may consider suitable, and for this purpose may require the designs and plans of all vessels, to be built for the performance of the contract, to be submitted to them previously to their construction. " Proper accommodation to be provided, free of expense, for the naval officer in charge of the mails ; but the parties tendering ai c at liberty to state Avhat deduction they would make in the event of this condition not being required. " A penalty of £100 to be incurred if the vessels stop, linger, or deviate from the direct course, or put back or return, except from stress of weather or other unavoidable circumstance, or unless authorised by the officer in charge of the mails. "The said Commissioners shall at any time during the continuance of the contract-, in case of great public emergency, have power and be at liberty to purchase all or any of the said vessels at a valuation, or to charter the same exclusively for Her Majesty's service, at a rate of hire to be mutually at the time fixed and agreed on by them and the contractors ; but if any difference should at any time or times arise as to the amount of valuation or hire so to be paid, such difference shall be referred to two arbitrators, one to be chosen from time to time by the said Commissioners, and the other by the contractors ; and if such arbitrators should at any time or times not agree in the matter or question referred to them then such question in dilierence shall be referred by them to an umpire, to be chosen by such arbitrators before they proceed with the reference to them ; and the joint and concurrent award of the said arbitrators, or the separate award of the said umpire when the arbitrators cannot agree, shall be binding and conclusive on all parties," "The contractors shall undertake for themselves all arrangements relative to quarantine as connected with the due and regular performance of the conditions of the contract. " The contractors shall not assign, underlet, or dispose of the contract, or any part thereof, without the consent in writing of the said Commissioners ; and in case of any deliberate or wilful breach thereof by the contractors, the said Commissioners may terminate it without any previous notice to them, nor shall they be entitled to any compensation in consequence of such determination. "No member of the House of Commons shall be admitted to any share or part of the contract, or to any benefit to arise therefrom, in pursuance of the provisions of the act of Parliament. " The contractors to be bound with two responsible sureties, to be named in their tenders, in the penalty of £4000, for the due fulfilment of the contract ; and they must furnish the names of the parlies of whom inquiries can be made as to their responsibility."

[Fiom the "Times" Septembei 17] Tbe advertisement from the Admiialty for tenders for a steam communication to Sydney at intervals of two months, by the Cape of Good Hope, at a speed of 8£ knots per hour, is looked upon in the city as simply ridiculous. It Las not awakened the slightest interest on the part of any of the merchants connected with Australia, and the only hope it seems to have created is, that it may serve as another and final illustration of the way in which our mail contract system is suffered, to cripple a bianch of enterprise for which we have greater advantages than any other nation. The population of Australia, exclusive of New Zealand, is little slioi t of -100,000 souls, a.Del its rate of'incieiree. lias been about 100 per cent, in 10 years. She takes of our manufactures an annual total of between £2,000,000 and £3,000,000 sterling, that is to say, as much as the whole of our North American possessions, more than, the whole of our West Indian colonies, insular and continental, including Honduras, and more than four times as much as the Cape of Good Hope. Steam-mail contiacts to our North American colonies have been, granted for the last 12 years, and now cost per annum. By the West Indies the same advantage has been enjoyed for 10 years, and the cost per annum is £2-10,000. Lastly, to the Cape a similar grant has been made, involving an annual expenditure of £31,000. Under these circumstances, Australia for five years importuned the Government either to deal with her in the same way, or, at all events, to leave her free to obtain from our merchants and capitalists the natural benefits which her enormous and growing trade would speedily have insured. She offered, moreover, to contribute some portion of the expense. But, although the cry continued throughout the whole of that period, and scarcely a letter was received from her merchants which did not contain Rome bitter expression at the treatment piactised, neither warnings nor appeals had the slightest effect. The public meetings of the colonists, which were almost confined to petitioning for steam communication, and protesting against convict immigration, were answered by steady obstruction in the former case, and in the latter by the introduction into Van, Diemen's L'ind during the past year of no less than 2,894 ciiminals. Finally, the announcement was made that what had been denied to Austialia, with her 400,000 prosperous and enterprising inhabitants, was fouhwitii to be g-ianted to our African stations at Siena Leonp, Cape Coast Castle, and Fernando Po» The crowning fact of the history seemed thus attained, and here it actually stood at the commencement of the present month. Suddenly, however, came the news, which may possibly, in the course of another year, attract to Sydney every ship and steam-vessel that can get there. The number of ships that entered San Francisco in the quarter ending September, 1850, was 488, with a total buiden of 142,564 tons — many of them steamers of the largpst kind, which have since been followed by others woiking not only without the advantage of a Government contract, but absolutely in profitable competition with tbose so favouied. With her existing population, her sp'endid climate, and other attiactions for immigrants no reason could be shown, supposing the gold discoveries confiimed, why the marvels to be witnessed, at Sydney should not exceed those of Californin. At this juncture the Government resolved to act, and consequently to a colony which can now boast the prospect of seeing its harbours thronged with ships of all Kinds, and all nations, the boon 13 at length conceded of ;i slow steamer from the mother country six times in a year. Anything more ludicrous was perhaps never yet recorded, even among all that has occurred in the shape of Government inteifeience with commerce. But, absurd, as it is, the evil connected with it may still be serious. So completely has self-reliance been deadened in this country as regards the establishment of steam lines by the pernicious influence of monopolies that even with existing prospects it is piobable no body of peisons will be found bold enough to start an independent enterprise. More than a year ago the Pacific Steam Company of Liverpool tendered a monthly mail for „£48,000 per annum. If it were safe at that time to offer to undertake it with such a payment the improved circumstances of Australia, her incieascd traffic with the west coast of Ametica, and the opening up of tho Nicaragua transit, to say nothing of the gold question, would now seem at least to warrant an experiment without any such aid. Of couise, if the postages or even half of them weie allowed theie would not be a moment's difficulty, but it is in that point that the power of the Government lies ; and, as it is hopeless to endeavour to disturb their routine views, whatever is now done should be done without them. The colonists, moreovei, would bu far more willing- to patronize and make sacrifices for a line that should boldly stait on it<? own resources than for one which had subjected itself to all sorts of niggling shackles and delays in negotiating with the miserable and humiliating'nivitations of the Lords of the Admiralty. At all events, if the gold news he confirmed, and no steps are taken, we may at once resign the South Pacific to 1 ho Americans along with tbe North. They know the held it presents, and, if we aie indisposed to shaie it with them, it is to bo hoped we shall be ratiunal enough not to complain when they shall render the service to our fellow-countrymen at the antipodes of regularly conveying goods and intplligenue many days in advance of the renidikable fleet for which, since the leceipt of tho recent tidings, tho Government have so suddenly adveitised.