GIANT LINER

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 274, 14 July 1932, Page 2

GIANT LINER

stated to cost £6000 a foot to build. BRITISH EXPERTS' VIEWS. Known as "the ship that is costing £6000 a foot," the French superliner "T 6" is making fairly rapid progress«-at the St.'Nazaire shipyard (says the London "Daily Telegraph"). New information shows this vessel to be practieally identical in size with the 72,000-ton Cunardelwhich has been lying on the stocks at Clydebank since work was suspended last December. The motives which prompted tlie General trans-atlantic Company to embark on the construction ' of their giant ship are far from comprehensible, for her design is such as would appear to render any profitable working of the vessel impossible, even under normal economic conditions. Her passenger aceommoda!tion represents the last word in luxury, for space has been ruthlessly sacx-ificed to give the individual voyager a quite abnormal amount of room. It is uniderstood that 1 er total passenger capacity is extraordinarily limited in proportion to her size. In this care fares would apparently be correspondingly high, yet the current tendency, exemplified in the recent drastic cuts made in passenger rates on the North Atlantic route, is to reduce rather than increase the cost of luxury accommodation in ships plying between Europe and the United States. British shipping experts are satisfied that the new French liner cannot possibly pay her way, even under the most favourable conditions. Her first cost is estimated at 770 million francs, while the fuel bill for driving her at thirty knots from Havre to New York will be enormous. The length is stated to he 1020 feet, and the breadth 117 feet, "outside" dimensions which must complicate still further the berthing and docking process on both sides of the Atlantic. Thanlcs to the loan granted by the French Treasury early in the year, work on the "T 6" is proceeding steadily, and her launching is expected before the autumn. She is scheduled to sail on her maiden voyage at the opening of the North Atlantic spring season in 1934, when the owneis are hopeful that she will eapture the "blue riband" from the Bremen and Europa and retain it again st the challenge of the two Italian super-liners which will also be in service by then. On the other hand, the singular circumstances in which this great ship is being built are such that doubts are freely expressed in international shipping circles as to whether she will ever he seen afloat.