WESTPORT STEAM SERVICE.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1149, 10 February 1874, Page 4

WESTPORT STEAM SERVICE.

[westport evening star.]

It is much to be desired that the motion carried in the (Council by Mr J. B. Fisher, for a subsidy of £SOO to a steamer doing duty as tug and tender at Westport, and also trading to coastal ports, will not share the fate of motions of similar purport brought forward previously from time to time in the Council. As far back as the session of ISG9, Mr A. Reid proposed "That his Honor should bo requested to place on the supplementary estimates the sum of £IOOO for a steam subsidy for the West Coast," and the motion being afterwards amended to £GOO, it was seconded by Mr Luckie and

iasscd without demur, but nothing

over came of it. Like many other equally useful projects, it was banished away among the obscurity of " Supplementary items," and there permitted to remain. It is true that in each succeeding session faint attempts at resuscitation have been made, and to get the item placed in good position among tho " Estimates," but it has been left to our new member to achieve this, and thus prospering we may hopo that the subsidised steamer will soon be an accomplished fact. The utility and need for such a boat as an adjunct to

tho Melbourne steam service has uever been questioned. The necessity also for regular communication with scattered mining communities along the coast will bo so self assertive, whenever the steamer takes up her running, that the only wonder will bo why the public have been so long debared the benefit. Settlement at the Ngahawhau, Mokihinui, Karamea, and Little "Wanganui will bo promoted, tho mining industry now languishing will speedily expand and the means of easy and regular communication between the coastal communities will in a hundred different ways result in advantage.