STEAM COMMUNICATION

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 747, 11 June 1853, Page 3

STEAM COMMUNICATION

[Trom the " Melbourne Argns" May 21]. Tlie voyage of the miserable steamer Adelaide, just completed, lias been so disastrous to Australia, as to com; pel us to acknowledge that steam communication itself, if conducted upon the principles hiiberto adopted by the Australian Steam Navigation Company, would be a positive evil of great magnitude to these colonies. The proceedings of that Company have been unfortunate from the commencement ; and have grown worse at each successive 6tep. Every one of its steamer* has made a wretched voyage, each outdoing its predecessor The Australian proved itself a somewhat worse sailer, than an ordinary sailing-vessel; the Sydney proved itself worse than the Australian; the Melbouru* proved itself very much worse than the Sydney; and tiie Adelaide caps the climax, by proving itselt immeasurably inferior even to the Melbourne. To show the steadily increasing nautical sins of this mismanaged fleet, we may refer to a letter from one of the passenger victims by the Adelaide. He shows that the first, the Australian, took forty-four days to reach the Cape ; the second, the Sydney, took fifty-four days; the third, the Melbourne, took seventy five days; while the fourth, the Adelaide, look seventy-seven da.\s. With a stta lily descending scale like this, is it too much to wonder whether the fifth will ever reach this port at alll Even while these rematks are in course of preparation, we are apprised through the agency of the other companies, whose s'earners Hellespont, by the Cape route, and Shangae from Singapore) are dasbing side by side up to Hobson's Bay, that once more the Australian is found to be all wrong. She had started for Austialia for sooth, and put back "leaky." Her precise kind of disarrangement does not appear to be clearly known, but we find it somewhat quaintly described in our latest English paper, as a ''defect, which admits lb • sea into the ship, but does not allow it to escape again,"—a peculiarity which, to our non-nautical ears, se.mis to indicate about as (inconvenient a complaint as any t-ea-going vess.l could be troubled with. The preposterous length of the voyage is a minor evil, in comparison with the anxiety occasioned by the dread of ship-wreck, which haunted this community for weeks in the case of the last two steamers. We w.-re almost on the point of giving up the Adelaide for 1, st, when the lumbeiing old hulk was reported at last to have rolled into Adelaide. And if she did not suffer shipwreck, it certainly is not the fault of the Company ; for the narrative of the voyage plainly shews that every reasonable precaution to insure it was carefully taken before she was sent out. The whole case exhibits a scandalous amount of mismanagement, which should not be permitted to pass uninvestigated. All this is the more provoking when it is considered that these steamers carry the most valuable freights that c >uld be paced in them. Thus, the Australian took hj ime something near half-a-million sterling in gok!dust alone ; and the Adelaide brings out about £300,000 st'ilmg in specie. Surely such treasures as these ate worth being consigned to sea-worlhy vessels. The mischiefs inflicted on the mercantile community here by the detention of the Adelaide, and the fears for her safety, have been intolerable. Mails have been postponed—goods have arrived before the advices or bills of lading bad come to ' k hand—correspondence baa been confusid—and business transactions have been utterly deranged. It is most provoking to think that n tteamer holding the Government mail contract, and for which the mails had been kept back for several weeks, should have left London on the 11th December, and arrive in Port Phillip on the 11th May following--a period of five months precisely !--wbile a steamer belonging to another company, which started two month and five days after her, should yet be able to arrive.: twenty days before her. In fact, if anything could render more ridiculous the lumbering movements of our hitherto principal line, it would be the manner in which their ve-sels have been literally danced round by the„]Jarbinger, the Chusan, the Formosa, and other steamers of better managed companies. We sincerely hope that this last experiment of the Australian Steam Navigation Company will either be the termination of its blundering proceedings, or that some other Company will quietly take the lend, and shelve the firstformed Company altogether. We may be thought to be too severe in our remarks upon this subject. But no such opinion would be held by any one who had seen the irritation, annoyance, fear, and inconvenience to which this whole community has been for months exposed, by the delays to which w r e have alluded. No one could blame us, who saw, as we saw, this much-vaunted Adelaide cowling up our harbour, ot a rate of something like three knots an hour, throwing up little jtts of momentary smoke, as if the sight of the anchorage cheered her on to the reckless expenditure of another scuttle-full of coals ; and who felt, as we felt, r.t the thought that this was Great Britain's mode of postal communication with bet t richest colony. The pr esent trade of tl e port is indicated by the lis of shipping in the harbour, which we give in another column. The numbers are N-of blips 6-1, barques t>o ; trigs 80; schooners 3"; aid steamers 4; giving a total of 100 vessels r.t ;]\ sizes. There is no reason w by even sins, ie vessel of this fine fleet should not bo actively employed,