Britons & Ships

Britain may be a nation of shopkeepers, but her shopkeepers are exceedingly jealous of her ships & sailors--world's largest merchant marine. And Britain's shipping tycoons are jealous of their individual companies. Though big lines in Italy. Germany, Japan and the U. S. have pocketed their pride and combined for economy (TIME, Nov. 7), Liverpool's stubborn operators are still fighting it out from Land's End to Sandy Hook, from Manchester to Sunda Strait. Last week what observers thought was a step toward a truce was taken when Frederick William Lewis Lord Essendon, 62-year-old chairman of Furness, Withy & Co., was elected head of White Star Line (Oceanic Steam Navigation Co.). John Pierpont Morgan the Elder in 1902 tossed White Star into International Mercantile Marine, his great pot of North Atlantic shipping. For $35,000,000 I. M. M. tossed it out to Lord Kylsant's Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. (chartered by Queen Victoria) in 1926. After towering Lord Kylsant ("Lord of the Seven Seas") was convicted of selling Royal Mail stock with a fraudulent prospectus, White Star bulked large in the scrambled affairs of fallen Royal Mail. Still owed to I. M. M. on the purchase price was (and is) $11,000,000. Like most transatlantic lines White Star was running in the red. Reports that Lord Essendon's Furness, Withy or Cunard were dickering for it have popped up almost monthly. Though the election of Lord Essendon as White Star's chairman involved no deal, shipping men believed a merger was in the books. Last year alert Lord Essendon persuaded his stockholders to authorize an additional 2,000,000 shares of stock "to take advantage of any favorable opportunities which might present themselves for still further expanding business." In the reorganization of Royal Mail, effected last August, Lord Essendon played a lead part. One-half of Royal Mail's one and one-half million tons of shipping were grouped into two new operating subsidiaries, one combining services to Africa's west coast, one to South America's east coast. Lord Essendon became head of the South American group. Famed Union Castle Mail Steamship Co. serving Capetown and Africa's east coast, Lamport & Holt, owner of the ill-fated Vestris, and White Star continued to operate as separate Royal Mail subsidiaries.

Against the crack ships of Sir Percy's fleet, the Berengaria, Aquitania and Mauretania, Lord Essendon pits his Majestic, "world's biggest ship," his Olympic, his new Georgic. Both face stern competition from the French Line, the North German Lloyd-Hamburg-American combination, U. S. Lines and to a lesser extent from Il Duce's Italia Line. Though Tsar Emil Lederer of the Transatlantic Passenger Conference keeps fares equalized for all, the fight for traffic is hot, the profits nil. Only big British shipping concern to escape the woes of the North Atlantic dogfight is the late great Lord Inchcape's mighty Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. World's largest steamship company, P. & O. operates almost two million tons of shipping, chiefly over the Empire route to India, the Far East and Australasia.

As the rivalry of line against line has been gradually eliminated, national rivalry has grown apace. Subsidized to some degree in all important shipping countries, merchant marines are badly overbuilt, even for pre-Depression trade. Long-headed ship operators in all lands are seeking a pact for the "limitation of liners." Speaking for British shipping last month. Lord Essendon said, "It is obvious that shipping is experiencing a far more deep-rooted depression than ever before. . . . Something must be done. That something can only be international cooperation. . . . There are some who think that matters should be left to right themselves by survival of the fittest. That seems to me a crude policy."

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