The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Passenger Trade on North Atlantic Creating a Desire for Sea Travel by Short Cruises— Advent of Empress of Britain a Challenge to New York ping do new principles, improve- ments, and fashions follow close upon one another nowadays. In recent numbers of MARINE ReE- view, in sketching the rise of the great North Atlantic passenger traffic, an attempt has been made to set forth the more important developments that have arisen to the present time in that trade. : Hardly was the narrative presented in print when there asserted them- selves two new influences which had quietly been gathering headway during the past two years, influences that clearly constitute threads of the story as significant probably as any of those of the past. For the one we have to consider that suddenly popularized week-end cruise; for the other an attempt at an appraisal of the effect on transatlantic passenger travel by the advent of the EMPRESS OF BRITAIN. In 1929 and 1930 the miniature sports midget golf, table tennis, etc.; in 1931 the miniature cruises! The idea of pleasure cruises on ocean liners appears to have been put into practice for the first time early in the 1890’s, when the Hamburg- American line gave it a trial with one of its greyhounds, the AUGUSTA ViIc- TORIA. The plan later gained a certain amount of favor among the other steamship companies also. F vine co ne in the sphere of ship- Beginning of the Pleasure Cruise However, it was really after the Great war that the pleasure cruise became the important department in the activities of the Atlantic steam- ship lines that it now is. Along with cruises to Mediterranean lands, to South Africa, to South America, to the West Indies, and to Scandinavian shores, the post-war convenience of the Panama canal has rendered prac- ticable a number of around-the-world cruises annually. The principle of these cruises, from the standpoint of ship operation, has been that they served to keep the big passenger liners employed in the off- seasons of transatlantic travel. Ac- tual profits were not looked for in cruises; yet, what revenues they could earn against the cost of such operation, figured at less of a loss than to lay them up altogether, in idleness but yet at overhead expense. In 1929 and 1930 the miniature sports cruise has risen from the humble status of a lesser evil to the rank of 22 By W. L. Harms a real field of operations for the At- lantic lines. The Hamburg-American Co. itself had recognized possibilities in it years before the War. Besides having assigned several smaller ves- sels to cruising service as their defi- nite province, the company in 1910-11 had caused its famous record breaker, the DEUTSCHLAND, then ob- solescent, to be remodeled into a specialized cruising steamer, renaming her VICTORIA LUISE. Vessels Rebuilt Especially for Cruises Following the War, in finally com- pleting, in 1923, the somewhat delayed steamship FRANCONIA, a proud vessel of 20,000 tons, the Cunard company found it worth while to fit her with special regard for cruising duty, though primarily the ship remained a standard liner. Further circumstances have led the. Hamburg-American line now to classify the well-known RxErso- LUTE and RELIANCE, of similar ton- nage, as cruising steamers; their transatlantic voyages in regular liner service indeed now seem to be con- sidered rather a sideline for this pair. Still, it remains a question whether the cruising business, for a transat- lantic shipping line in general, is a source of profit even now. While it is reasonable to suppose that liners of moderate speed and therefore of not extraordinary operating cost may \W/E now have the week end cruise of transatlantic liners to tap a virgin source of patron- age. Will it have a permanent effect in increasing more ex- tended sea travel? @ A new liner of great size and speed, crossing the. Atlantic trom land to land in 314 days, with Montreal as a terminal, threatens the isolated supremacy of New York as a port of de- parture and entry to the North American continent. @ Shipping is seething with Progress and the plans for our own superliners are gathering dust. Editor's Note =. pee nd MARINE REVIEwW—September, 1931 show some fair returns, it is obvious that in such leisurely occupation high-powered express steamships like the MAURETANIA, CoLuMBUS, Homeric, and FRANCE are not to be expected to do more than break even at the best. So far we have been considering the usual types of pleasure cruise, ranging in length from several weeks to several months. Cruises of shorter duration, taking up just a week or two, have long been offered also, by shipping lines operat- ing in services of a coastwise nature. The vessels here concerned, of course do not approach ocean carriers in scale of design, there being no place normal- ly in such trades for very large units. Some of the Atlantic lines have in the past likewise conducted short cruises at the European end. But at the New York terminus about the first offerings of this sort by a transatlan- tic company have been those vacation trips to Nova Scotia afforded by the Anchor line in the summer of 1929 with the steamers CALEDONIA, TRAN- SYLVANIA, and CALIFORNIA. Origin of the Shorter Cruise In the early part of the present year a still more abbreviated variety of pleasure cruise has suddenly sprung into popularity—the summer week-end cruise; into such popularity indeed that it has come to rival the standard off-season cruise in departmental, im- portance. Not the least interesting feature of this latest idea is that it emphatically involves the superliner class of steamship, meaning units of 40,000 tons and over, which previously have not been concerned with pleasure cruises. These week-end cruises fit so nice- ly into the schedules of the steamship companies on the one hand and into the week-ends and pocketbooks of pleasure seekers on the other that it 1s curious, and a bit aggravating, that the thing has not been experimented with long ago. In contrast to cruises of longer dur- ation the week-end cruises are con- ducted right in the busy summer sea- son, but without interrupting to any extent the regular transatlantic sched- ules of the liners employed. This is effected simply by introducing the cruises into the several days represent- ing the “turn-around” of the steamer at New York, between her arrival from Europe and her departure again for the return trip. In the case of express steamships this Fs ee 5 Ie OT Re ee