BRITISH SHIPPING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 August 1940, Page 6

BRITISH SHIPPING

NO INCREASE TOO GREAT MR CROSS’S SURVEY IMPRESSIVE FIGURES OF TRADE. GREAT RESERVES OF FOOD. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.45 p.m.) LONDON, August 25. The Minister of Shipping. (Mr Ronald Cross) broadcasting, said: “Our shipping resources are great, but cannot be too great to meet the needs of the future. We should frankly welcome all means of increasing our shipping, by the aid of shipyards in the Dominions and elsewhere.

“Britain embarks on the second year of the war with an importing capacity sufficient to meet all essential needs, but we shall continue to draw vast quantities of iron ore, pig iron, steel and other metals and raw materials upon which our war effort depends. We have built up stocks of imported staple foodstuffs so that they now stand at higher levels than at the beginning of the war, this at a moment when our own harvest has not yet been brought in. The Germans claim that they are blockading us effectively. The importation of 41- million tons of essential commodities during July leaves me very well satisfied. We lost, up to the middle of August, just under 1,900,000 gross tons of shipping from all causes and gained just over two million tons.

The best comment on the German proclamation of a total blockade of Britain is that the Navy has escorted over 33,000 ships since the outbreak of war and continues successfully to provide escorts. We are not only concerned with imports. Exports are our life blood. The amount of shipping which left Britain with cargo for America during July when warfare was most active, was 25 per cent higher than the monthly average from January to April.”