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Airplane View of John Brown & Co. Yard at Clydebank with New Cunard Express Liner Princess Elizabeth Under Construction European Shipping Still Depressed Over Two Hundred and Fifty Tankers Laid Up—Passenger Trades Hard Hit—Efforts to Adjust Shipyard Labor—New Vessels Launched ROM practically every aspect of European shipping and shipbuild- ing during the past quarter, the outlook is quite as gloomy as it was in the last report; only in one or two directions is there a slight sign of light and even then it is so slight that it can practically be disregarded. On the other hand in many sections things are worse than they have ever been and show little sign of improv- ing in the immediate future. The usual monthly tabulation of the June freights, taking the average of the various trades and of the whole world, has not yet been published by Lloyd’s, but the May figures give a good idea of the situation with regard to bulk cargoes. Their average is cer- tainly better by 1.29 per cent than the April figures, but at the end of the month there was a very distinct de- crease and June has been marked by many fluctuations. It may be men- tioned that the complete index figure for May was 73.96, compared with 70.27 for May 1930 and 89.83, for 1929, when the situation appeared to be quite bad enough to discourage most shipowners. Perhaps the most depressing market of all at the present time is the tank- er market, for owners who are lucky enough to get any charters at all are having to accept rates which are from thirty to forty per cent less than what was recently logged as the lowest on \ By Frank C. Bowen record. Over 250 tankers of various types are laid up, and within the last few weeks quite a number of the old- er ones have gone to the scrappers, mostly in Italy or Japan. Many of the ships which are now idle are brand new, some of them have never yet been to sea except on their trials, - and the owner who built during the recent boom without a long time char- ter in advance has been very heavily hit, while many of the _ shipyards which obtained temporary relief by building such ships on long terms are beginning to get very anxious about the safety of their money. It is significant of the present state of the tanker market that, far from getting their goods delivered as quick- ly as possible as is usually the case, a large and growing proportion are making the long voyage round the Cape ef Good Hope or Cape Horn rather than pay the tolls of the Suez and Panama canals. In passing it may be mentioned that the rates charged by the former waterway, taken in conjunction with the huge dividend that it is ina posi- tion to pay, has been the subject of very bitter protest lately in which practically all European shipowners have joined. The demand that these rates should be reduced was met by a flat refusal on the part of the Suez Canal Co., but this refusal was accom- panied by a reasoned statement of MarInE Review—August, 1931 the position of the shareholders over a period of years which certainly gives a rather different picture. The western ocean passenger trade has been the worst for many years, and the period under review has been distinguished by the enormous num- ber of scheduled sailings that have been cancelled by all the companies under an agreement among them- selves. The usual tourist traffic was down by 25 per cent during the peak period and by a very much greater proportion during the months that are normally slacker, so that the ships originally scheduled could not be filled even in what is usually the very busiest period of the year. The fact that immigration into the United States and Canada has practically dis- appeared naturally makes the situa- tion infinitely worse. Nearly all the lines who can con- trive it are attempting to improve matters by utilizing their passenger tonnage on yachting cruises, and alk sorts of new and original ideas have been put forward to tickle the palate of the holiday maker. Many of these cruises are quite short, varying from a week to one day, with the idea of advertising the attractions of a liner tour to those to whom big-ship travel- ing is an absolute novelty. Few of the companies are sufficiently opti- mistie to think that it will make very much difference to their longer cruises 57