Ship Conversation

Britons learned last week how far gone was sick British shipping when famed old Cunard Steamship Co., Ltd. reported a $3,000,000 net loss for 1932, a $2,000,000 drop in North Atlantic traffic. Four days prior. Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain had prescribed a cure in the House of Commons: an "arrangement" between Cunard & White Star. He set it as a condition to government subsidies to help Cunard finish its giant ship No. 534, now an idle skeleton in a Scotch shipyard. Everybody knew White Star was suffering as badly as Cunard from 1933's disastrous ocean traffic, but a two-year moratorium had put its finances in order.

The two famed old companies last week reluctantly faced Chamberlain's ugly fact that "it is no use to think we can effectively carry on our shipping trade in the North Atlantic if we have two great concerns competing with one another." Both wanted to make a bid to take Atlantic supremacy from North German Lloyd's sisters Bremen & Europa. They knew too that No. 534, designed to cross in four days flat, would need a sister ship to complete a crack two-way service. They knew something had to be done to meet the competition of German, French and Italian lines, all of which now present united fronts. Both view suggestions of a complete merger with die-hard grimness but last week, prodded by the Government, they had apparently reached the "conversation stage of a working arrangement.

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