Graf Zeppelin Trip Welcomed

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 789, 9 October 1929, Page 9

Graf Zeppelin Trip Welcomed

GREAT SHIPOWNER’S IDEAS STIMULATES TRAVEL Robert Dollar, master mariner of the Pacific, whose far-flung banner floats over eight great “round-the-world” tourist ships and some 50 others, watched the Graf Zeppelin soar over his home port after circumnavigating the globe, and was neither alarmed nor surprised. “I’m 86 years old and haven’t more than 20 years to worry about,” he smiled. “I don’t look for such great air developments as will impoverish me in that time. But I’m making no prophesies. I’ve stopped being surprised at men’s inventions.” “You must remember,” he recalled, "that the Zeppelin crossed the Pacific from Japan under the most favourable circumstances. She came eastward with a fair wind at her back and in a time of the year most adapted for easy flying. When they try to buck headwinds by flying westward during the months of January and February they’ll experience some terrible hardships. Furthermore they travelled light. “I’m not so very old. yet I've seen candles give way to oil lamps, and oil lamps give ivay to electric lights. I’ve seen horses crowded off the streets by motor-cars and the air filled with airplanes. In my time there have come the cable, the telegraph, the telephone and the radio, the movie and the talkie, the typewriter, the teletype and the telephoto, the Pullman sleeper, the skyscraper and a hundred other amazing things. Tt was 3S years ago I took my first oil-burning steamer across the Pacific. We had a terrible time, and when I got to Japan I went back to coal. Now look what oil has done for travel!” Dollar thinks air travel is fine for the steamship business. “Stimulates travel,” he says. “Anything that makes people interested in travel is good, good for them and for the world’s peace and prosperity. I’m not afraid of air competition. I welcome it.”