3rd July. Tam interim half-yearly general mecting, being the 115th, of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Go. was held on the 14th of June, Sir 'T. Sutherland, G.C.M.G., LL.D., M.P., being in the chair. As every one knows, the great feature of these meetings, where no accounts are presented, is the Chairman's speech, and in Sir Thomas the P. & O. shareholders have a chairman, who is not only ove of the ablest administrators in London, but who has few equals in the power of putting the position of things lucidly, forcibly, and convincingly. His oratory is a little of the platform type, but to use a most appropriate piece of slang, "he gets there just the same."
Sir Thomas was able to begin by saying that the Company had had upon the whole a satisfactory half-year, and when a shipowner allows asmuch as that, we know that he has had a very good time. The Company had, indeed, felt the pressure of famine and plague, which had devastated a certain part of India specie freights had fallen off; and they did not obtain the same amount of casual employment in the way of carrying troops and in other business of that kind, as in 1897. On the other hand, the revenue from passengers was larger than ever, and they had been helped by the rise in exchange in India. his led Sir Thomas into a little excursion on the Indian currency, and be remarked that: "While I recognise the great difficulty of introducing a gold standard into Indis, I see that there is even a still greater difficulty in going back upon the policy which has been in existence for the last four or five yeats—a policy which has closed the Indian mints to the free and unlimited coinage of silver—and, that being so, I feel tolerably confident that in the ordinary and normal operation of Indian trade, where exports are greater than imports, the tendency towards the fixed limit of exchange is likely to be reach even in the existing state of aflait Sir Thomas mentioned how India with a 1s, 4d. rupee would be handicapped in the race with China where the equivalent of the rupee is only worth a shilling or even less, but thought that the other advantages that India possesses over China would more than compensate for this handicap. "Her proximity to the great markets of Europe, her uecessarily low range of freights, her magnificent railway system, and her immunity from all internal taxation, which is so oppressive in the case of China, establish the conviction that an exchange rate of 1s, 4d. or thereabouts will never interfere with the large export from our great dependency of India." A most comfortable doctrine.
Sir Thomas then returned to the falling-off in the Bombay trade due to the famine and plague, and mevtioned that the Australian trade has been disappointing, which was no doubt owing to the three years' drought from which the colonies have been suffering on the top of the recent commercial crisis. 'I'he best proof was, that money was actually cheaper in Australia than in England, owing to the absence of enterprise and speculation; but lately rains had come, and the gold workings are doing better than they have done for many years. The China trade had been satisfactory, and his summary was that notwithstanding the accident to the China, there was no reason to doubt their ability to pay the normal dividend for the year.
As to the future, India is promising, Australia and Ci not unpromising. It was impossible, however, to know what coal was going to cost; and then Sir Thomas put in one of those serious-looking ore rotundo platitudes which he delights to insert in his speeches lest they should be too exciting. "Ihe position, however, is such that I venture to hope and believe—and I personally at all events shall be well satisfied if that result should be attained—that the anticipated improvement in our freight returns will compensate and counterbalance the enhanced cost of coal which we shall certainly have to meet during the present year. I think we shall obtain a very fair compromise if such should be the result." Sir Thomas discussed briefly the substitution of mineral oil for coal, but the difficulty is the uncertainty of the supply at the ports of call; and he mentioned the prospective exploitation of-the coal-fields of China,. This led him to the question of the opening up of China, and he confessed that there were grounds for the apprehension, that England would not be allowed to reap her fair share of this harvest, We have "to mest the rivalry of foreign countries whose policy is by no means that of the open door." The British shipowner, however, with his annual out-tarn of a million tons of steam shipping—how often Sir Thomas has told his shareholders that shipowaiug was being ruined by reckless building—is sure to hold his own, though German rivalry is getting serious, "with direct and Intge encouragement on the part of the German Government." Ihe English Government, on the other hand, pays very badly, and with every uew mail contract it pays lees and requires more onerous services.
Sir Thomas dwelt on the fact that it had been the policy of the Company to restrict the outlay of capital as far possible, although inten years it had' spent four and a-half millions sterling on new ships. But to meet the German competition may require an increased working capital; for though the P. 0. Ca. are on the very best terms with their German competitors, yet it will never do for them to fall behind in that race of competition on which they have evidently entered. Then Sir Thomas came to the stranding of the China, a vessel that cost a quarter of a million sterling, and as to which there is still a faint hope that she will be got off the rocks. He was obliged to say that the only way of accounting for her loss was that Captain de Home, a man with an excellent record, was suffering from an aberration of mind which prevented him from seeing his danger. The explanation given by Sir Thomas was so clear that it is well worth quoting:—* Doubtless there was some unexpected current, but the means were ready to hand for guarding against any danger from that cause. Texplain this by saying that there are two lights on the Island of Perim, and towards the higher of those lights the ship was steered under the captain's orders for at least three-quarters of an hour before she struck the shore. But it was also absolutely necessary thut after a certain interval the second light should be sighted to ensure that the ship was in her proper position, Herein lies the cruz of the matter; that light never was sighted, because the ship was on a wrong course, which shut it out from view. Now, when the ship, which was steaming at a rapid pace, had kept her course towards the high light for more than half-an-hour without seeing the second light, which named the Obstruction Point light, i should have been patent to the mind of the captain that the ship was ranning into danger." The captain's defence before the court of enquiry at Aden threw no light on the matter, and the only conclusion was " that this was a case either of over-confident or reckless navigation, and thus life was
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.