No More Intercoastal

The No. 1 trade route for U.S. merchantmen was without ships to load last week. There will be no more intercoastal trade* until there are once more enough ships.

From foggy Puget Sound to the foggy Gulf of Maine, 171 U.S. vessels--more than on any other ocean route--used to shuttle through the Panama Canal from coast to coast. They flew 16 house flags, in good years like 1937 carried almost seven million tons of cargo. But their rate wars were frequent, their earnings usually poor.

When war began, intercoastal operators sold some ships abroad (at double the pre-war tonnage value), chartered others to U.S. overseas operators. Thus reduced and with traffic booming, the intercoastal lines made a killing in 1940. But last year the Maritime Commission, desperate for tonnage, requisitioned more than half the remaining intercoastal tonnage, put several lines (including big Panama-Pacific) out of business. Last week the Commission notified the lines that all ships still in the intercoastal service would be needed immediately for more essential jobs.

Not the operators, but shippers, will feel this blow worst. In normal years the Canal route carried 1,486,000 tons of lumber, 1,223,000 tons of foodstuffs from the Pacific Coast, 1,221,000 tons of steel products from the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. To move all this over land will take 17,500 railroad cars, and the railroads are already under strain.

*Atlantic-Pacific trade--not to be confused with the coastwide trade, which includes Gulf-Atlantic tanker service.

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