The annual report of Lloyds Register of Shipping has just reached Shanghai, and in endeavouring to comment upon it there is the first difficulty that whereas Lloyd's is an essentially British institution it is paradoxically of the worl. The report tells not only about shipping all the world over, how the dificult countries are getting on as regards the ships they are building and the ships which are being built for them, the greater number of tankers being built, the vessels fitted with motor engines and so forth, but it then launches out into such matters as the amount of boiler and ship steel which the Society's surveyors have tested during the year under review, aircraft inspection, an inspection of the electrical power station at Monte Video and of a high preesure water tube boiler for a locomotive built for the London North Eastern Railway. Whereafter comes refrigerating. machinery, and, as if it were no? enough to have undertaken the inspection of this aboard steaniships, the surveyors interest themselves in cold storage plants ashore and refrigerated during the past year, bringing the aggregate number of vi sels s0 inspected to 26,568 under the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894, while another part of the Society's mul-titanous activities is the test: ing of chain cables and anchors. It seems hardly likely that any other institution in the world arries such a burden of responsibility, and one can hardly imagine any other better equipped for the performance of these tasks.
Naturally it is to. shipping that the public primarily looks for information from Lloyd's Register, and the comparison that are given are as interesting as in any previous report. It is shown that for the ye ended June, 1912, the number of vessels under construction coming within the cognizance of the Society "inas 893,: their gross tonnage being 2,600,000. Obviously to repair the ravage of the war the total of ships on the stocks jumped in the 1920 year to 1,299 with a tonnage of 4,422,640, while in the succeeding years it has remained under the 1912 figure. Only the year ending in June, 1930, is there any approach to the 1912 total, and for this period the number of ships under construction is shown as G01 with a tonnage of 2,081,619. This increase at a time when ships are being laid up, and, as the report points out, there no inducement for shipowners to order new cargo tonnage, is largely due to orders for vessels for the carriage of oil. "The world shortage of tanker tonnage," says the _repor, which was experienced about a year ago, is thus being rapidly-overcome." The other outstanding feature in the construction of new shipping is the continued increase in the demand for internal combustion engines, these being especially called for in connection wita the construction of tankers jus* mentioned.
It is satisfactory to mote that of the tonnage constructed during the year ended June, 1920, Great Britain was far ahead of any other country, the number of vessels built there being 439 of 1,210,597 tons, while the country next in' order was Japan with 17 vessels of a tonnage of 129,914. Of the total of tonnage constructed $49 vessels with a tonnage of 982,181 were for British ownership. The plans passed for new tonnage by the Committee of Lloyd's Reed by the report cover 601 ye; sels of 2,081,610 tons—the hig est total since 1920—and of this projected tonnage builders in Great Britain and Ireland have secured 59.89 per cent, (1,246,- 715 tons) and other countries 40.11 per cent. (834,895 tons). While the' local resident seeing vessels in their great numbers steaming out of the harbour and in day after day may have som conception of the enormous to nage there is afloat, it may nevertheless come as a surprise to learn that the in June last the total tonnage of merchant vessels holding the classification of Lloyd's Register amounts to 82,412,608 tons, an increase of nearly a million tons over the previous highest total, which was in June, 1929, The melancholy fact, however, as the report says, is that this increase has not been counter balanced a similar expan:
ion in overseas trade, which is evidenced by the very large amount of tonnage laid up all over the world. Until'improvement in trade occurs it is evident that this condition of affairs will continue to obtain, and shipowners have prepared for it by cutting down orders f cargo boats, "which in recen® months have been reduced by practically 50 per cent, It can only be hoped that a revival in trade will eventuate sooner than present tendencies suggest, $0' that the mournful spectacle of ships idle at their moorings will no longer be so common sight as at present.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.