Cruises Cancelled

First cruise from a U. S. port was conducted by Hamburg-American Packet Co. in 1890, when S. S. Augusta Victoria sailed from New York to the Mediterranean with 225 passengers. Since then many a hard-pressed steamship company has turned to cruises to take up the slack in its regular passenger traffic. Last week 260 cruises planned for the 1931-32 season proved to be too many. Seventeen trips were cancelled, more were likely to be abandoned later. Withdrawn were seven West Indies sailings of Red Star's Belgenland, one each of Cunard's Carinthia and Caledonia, two Mediterranean voyages of White Star's Homeric and one of the same company's Britannic.

Abandoned also was the Manhattan office of International Sleeping Car Co. (Cie Internationale des Wagons Lits et des Grands Express Eurapecas), famed from Peiping to Paris as the operator of pullman and restaurant cars.

Meanwhile S. S. Leviathan, arriving at Manhattan, completed her first round trip to Europe under Roosevelt-Dollar-Dawson control (TIME, Nov. 2). A West Indian cruise she was scheduled to make was cancelled and she herself was ordered laid up "indefinitely" at a Hoboken pier. Of her 800 men, all but a skeleton crew were thrown out of work. International Mercantile Marine Co., half-owner of U. S. Lines, promised to try to place them on its other ships. Surprised by the company's action. Representative Ewin Lamar Davis, chair-man of the House Merchant Marine Committee, talked of an investigation of ocean mail contracts and construction loans under the Jones-White Law. What annoyed Congressman Davis was that the Leviathan should be laid up while White Star Line's Majestic continued in service. He pointed out that I. M. M. is U. S. agent for White Star Line which it sold to Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. in 1927, and for which is still owed $11,000,000 on the transaction. Declared he: "The I. M. M. must constantly have to make a choice whether it will throw the weight of its great influence and loyalty to the line for which it is agent or to the American line of which it is part owner. In the present instance it seems to have resolved this question in favor of the British line."

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