WHAT ONE SHIP CAN DO

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 May 1941, Page 5

WHAT ONE SHIP CAN DO

SOME AMAZING FIGURES. "Every ship must keep its convoy date, must be turned around in port as quickly as is humanly possible, must be repaired with all speed when damaged,” said Sir Arthur Salter, M.P., Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Shipping, in a speech at Newcastle. “Every hour that can be saved by officers and seamen in a vessel’s turn-around or voyage; every hour that men in the yards can save by intenser effort in building or repairing is a definite help to an earlier Allied victory. A single ship can bring in a year as much wheat' as can be grown on 30.000 acres. One ship can give up in a year as much timber as a forest of trees that has taken a generation or more to grow. One ship can feed a whole city or supply a whole division. Some time ago I heard some owners of road lorries describing an excellent scheme under which, by a certain pooling of their lorries, they saved 300,000 miles of lorry journeys and a corresponding amount of petrol. It was laudable. But as I listened I had it in mind that, at that very moment, there was a tanker in the Channel which had been damaged by a mine; it was being towed in with care and skill to a home port. The cargo alone in that ship was enough to drive lorries not for 300.000 miles, but for 30.000,000—100 times as much. And the ship itself can bring as much four times a year. Happily the ship and its cargo were both saved and this was worth at once in petrol 100 times as much as the re-routeing of the lorries, and 400 times as much within a year.”