Posh Problems

In the shipyards of Queens Island, Belfast last week, joiners, painters, decorators and electricians were swarming over the newly launched, most luxurious superliner of Britain's maritime fleet. It is the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co.'s 45,000-ton, $42 million superliner, Canberra. Sailing for P. & O., which coined the word "posh,"-the 740-ft. Canberra will be one of the poshest ships afloat, with a cruising speed of 27 1/2 knots, air conditioning throughout, and closed-circuit television for passengers while the ship is at sea. Designed with an aluminum superstructure to save weight, and engines aft to give passengers more deck space, the liner will carry as many passengers as Cunard's Queen Elizabeth. It will have almost three times as many tourist as first-class passengers (1,650 to 600) to entice budget-conscious travelers.

The Canberra joins the largest merchant and passenger fleet in the world, controlled by the 27-company P. & 0. group, with 370 ships (2,342,028 g.r.t). From London, the superliner wall sail through the Suez Canal to Australia, then across the Pacific to Vancouver and San Francisco, finally home via the same route. With her sister ship, the still-building, 40,000-ton Oriana, the Canberra will give P. & O. a commanding lead in Pacific passenger travel. Since it first sailed in these waters in 1954, P. & 0. has undercut the luxury-minded Matson and American President lines by emphasizing low-cost tourist-class rates; next year alone, the company will boost its berth facilities for Pacific travel by 60%.

War's Toll. P. & O. began operations in 1837 with two small paddle steamers and an Admiralty charter to carry the rhails to Spain and Portugal, soon extended its routes beyond the Iberian Peninsula to India and the Orient. When World War I began, the company laid plans for expansion to meet the expected shipping shortage at war's end. Though the Admiralty took over P. & O.'s fleet, the company bought up seven of its competitors, by 1919 controlled half a million more tons of shipping than when the war broke out --though most of its own ships had been sent to the bottom.

P. & O. managed to weather the squalls of the Depression, but in World War II the company was almost swamped when 1.187,548 tons of its shipping was sunk. It began a 70-ship rebuilding program at the end of the war, branched into other areas of transport, laid the keels for 14 new oil tankers costing some $112 million, bought an aviation subsidiary, British Aviation Services, that last year ferried more than 67,000 cars and 193,000 passengers across-the English Channel.

Profits Down. With lots of ships, P. & 0. also has lots of problems. This week it got a new man at the helm to cope with them. Sir Donald Anderson, 53, who started with P. & O. in 1934, took over from Sir William Currie, 75, as P. & O. chairman.

A world surplus of cargo and tanker tonnage has knocked the bottom out of the shipping business, plummeted P. & O.'s profits from $29 million in 1957 to $8,400,000 last year. A major culprit in the world shipping slump, says Sir Donald, is U.S. maritime policy, which grants Government subsidies to shipping companies. He complains that Government subsidization of shippers (P. & O. gets no subsidy) "makes it impossible for us to plan operating costs, because it is impossible to form a judgment on what another company will be able to do if that company is receiving Government aid."

Anderson scoffs at the future of nuclear power in shipping, holds that now oil can run a ship just as well as nuclear energy

*Because of the heat, P. & O. put VIPs in cabins on the relatively cool port side on the journey to the Orient, on the starboasd side on the way home. P. & O. officials soon shortened "port out, starboard home" to "posh." used the word to describe their luxury facilities.

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