New Zealand's Coastal Trade 1875-1975: From the First Steamers to the Decline of the Cargo Fleet

Abstract

In recent months you may have noticed that our coastal shipping industry has been splashing itself across the head-lines. A Ministry of Transport-sponsored move by the government to deregulate and to throw the coast open to international competition has provoked a sharp response. While producer boards have welcomed abandoning cabotage, (coastal trade) shipping lines, maritime unions and some international maritime experts have queried the wisdom of the move in terms that range from the polite but firm to the unprintable.'

The debate is anything but new. About 120 years ago New Zealand coastal companies were also drawing up battle lines against foreign interlopers. Then it was against the British lines, one of which, the Albion Line, had placed a steamer called Taiaroa in the Dunedin-Timaru trade a few months after the Union Steam Ship Company's steamer Bruce at the entrance to Otago Harbour late in 1875. Albion was one of two big British lines battling it out for control of the New Zealand-UK trade with the New Zealand Shipping Company formed a couple of years earlier at Christchurch. The Scots had come to the obvious conclusion: if they wanted a larger share of the bluewater pie (the New Zealand-UK run), it would help to control the coastal feeder routes.