PACIFIC STEAMERS

Southland Times, Issue 18824, 18 May 1920, Page 2

PACIFIC STEAMERS

AUSTRIAN LLOYD LINER TO RUN. OCEANIC COMPANY’S PLANS. During the week a Sydney message stated that the Oceanic Steamship Company has purchased the former Austrian Lloyd liner Martha Washington, and intends to run her in conjunction with the Ventura and Sonoma in a three-weekly service across the Pacific. The company has also purchased the cargo steamer Las Vegas, which will be incorporated with the Oceanic Line. The steamers will henceforth come to Sydney under the auspices of the General Steamship Corporation of San Francisco, and will call at New Zealand. Commenting on the message the Wellington Post on Tuesday stated; —The Martha Washington is a ship of 8312 tons, of British construction, and 18 years old. She has lately been owned by the United States Shipping Board, and was one of the interned enemy ships taken over by that authority. There is other evidence, additional to above, of the interest of United States and British shipowners in the future of the trans-Pacific trade, and the East Coast trade, via Panama, with Australia and New Zealand. It cannot be ascertained here at what port in the dominion the Oceanic Steamship Line referred to in the cablegram will call, but when thus line was running between San Francisco and Sydney, Auckland was a port of call, both out and home, the liners then in the trade being Sierra, Ventura, and Sonoma. Sydney was their terminal port in Australia; San Francisco that in the United States. The Canadian Government is regarding the possibilities of the New Zealand-Australian trade in all seriousness, and the Canadian Government Merchant Marine, Ltd., is an earnest of its intentions to link up the dominion of Canada with Australia and New Zealand. Its fleet will eventually consist of 60 vessels with a total tonnage of 325,000, and some of these vessels are already in the transpacific trade, via Panama, loading at Halifax, St. John (New Brunswick), Sydney, (Nova Scotia), Quebec, and Montread, also at Vancouver and Victoria, running in connection with the Canadian National Railways. Its steamers are already trading to Auckland and Wellington. The New Zealand Shipping Company has monthly sailings to Australia and New Zealand from Montreal in summer, and St. John in winter. The Union Company maintains the Sydncy-Auckland-Vanconvcr, and the Wel-lington-San Francisco services. The Canadian Minister of Marine recently announced that he intends to give out some contracts for combined passenger and freight vessels of 15,000 tons gross. This is probably intended as an encouragement to the steel shipbuilders of Canada to equip their yards for the large-scale construction with a view to getting some, of the business which Canadian and British-Canadian shipping companies have hitherto had no option but to place with British shipyards.