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1、Britannia Rues the WavesAndrew NeilBritains merchant navy seldom grabs the headlines these days; it is almost a forgotten industry. Yet shipping is the essential lifeline for the nations economy. Ninety-nine percent of our trade in and out of the country goes by shipand over half of it in British sh
2、ips.Shipping is also a significant British success story. It earns over 1000 million a year in foreign exchange earnings: without our merchant fleet, the balance of payments would be permanently in deficit, despite North Sea oil. But ,today this vital British industry is more in peril than ever befo
3、re. On almost all the major sea routes of the world, the British fleet risks being elbowed out by stiff foreign competition.The threat comes from two main directions: from the Russians and the Eastern bloc countries who are now in the middle of a massive expansion of their merchant navies, and carvi
4、ng their way into the international shipping trade by severely undercutting Western shipping compaines; and from the merchant fleets of the developing nations, who are bent on taking over the lions share of the trade between Europe and Africa, Asia and the Far East- routes in which Britain has a bib
5、 stake.Today, the British fleet no longer dominates the high seas: our share of the worlds merchant fleet has fallen from 40 per cent to around eight per cent. But, in terms of tonnage, the British merchant navy has continued to expand, it can now carry over two-thirds more than it could in 1914, an
6、d, almost alone among our traditional industries, shipping has remained a major success story.Unlike the rest of British industry, ship-owners invested big. In the early 1960s, the shipping companies cashed in on government grants and tax concessions. Between 1966 and 1976, British shipping lines in
7、vested at a rate of over 1 million a day. By the early 1970s, it seemed that, some-where in the world, a new British ship was being launched every week. The result is that Britain has a very modern fleet: the average age of our merchant ships is only six years, and over half the fleet is under five
8、years old. For some time now, British shipping managers have stayed ahead of the competition by investing in the most sophisticated ships.The other major factor which has played a key role in the dominance of the British merchant navy is an institution invented by the British well over 100 years ago
9、: the conference.In the middle of the 19th century, competition between sailing-ships and steam-ships became out-throat, and price cutting ruined many long-established companies. So the ship owners got together to establish a more settled system, and they set up a system of price fixing. In other wo
10、rds, every possible type of cargo had a price, which all owners agreed to charge. It was, in fact, a cartel, though the British ship owners gave it the more dignified name of a conference. The system has certainly stood the test of time. Today, there are about 300 conferences governing the trade-rou
11、tes of the world, and the British still play a major role.By reducing competition, shipping conferences have taken some of the risk out of the dodgy business of moving goods by sea. They make it harder, perhaps, to make a big killing in good times, because you have to share the trade with other conf
12、erence members. But they make it easier to weather the bad times, because there is no mad, competitive scramble for the available trade.By the early 1970s, bad times were just around the corner. The world shipbuilding boom reached its peak in 1973,but that was the year of the Arab-Israeli war, which
13、 was followed rapidly by the quadrupling of oil prices. By 1974, the industrialised world had begun its slide into the worst depression since the 1980s, and the shipping industry had entered its long years of crisis.The first to be affected were the oil-tanker fleets. As oil demand was cut back, cha
14、rter rates plummeted, and the estuaries of the world became jammed with the steadily increasing numbers of moth-ball tankers. Norway and Greece suffered most. British ship owners had not become so involved in the tanker boom in the first place, so they were not so badly affected. By 1976, the slump
15、had begun to bite into the bulk-carrier trade. Bulk carriers are ships that carry dry cargo of one particular kind, such as sugar, coal or wheat, with iron ore being by far the most important. But with the world steel industry deep in the doldrums, who needed iron ore carriers? With its big bulk-car
16、rier fleet, the British shipping industry now began to feel the pinch.Even though the slump spread fast into most shipping sectors, the British fleet was still a long way from bankruptcy. The one area which has weathered the economic storms best is that controlled by the conferences: the scheduled freight-liner services - and that is where Britains fleet is strongly entrenched.Liner-freight vessels offer people who want to send good
