Abstract
When peace returned in 1919 Britain’s shipping industry, although few realised it at the time, faced a new world. The period before 1914 had seen a long period of growth and prosperity, with quickly rising trade in primary products; the war years themselves had seen immense profits as earnings from merchant ships soared. But by 1921 the good years had gone, and for the remainder of the inter-war period there was to be a constant struggle against downward freight rates, rising costs, and intensifying competition. The inter-war years were bisected by the world depression of 1929–33, the worst slump in history, when problems for shipowners and shipbuilders reached new depths. In 1932 nearly one-fifth of Britain’s ocean-going tonnage was laid up, while few of the voyages made were returning profits.
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The Blue Funnel Line is so well known in China that it always comes as a surprise to the China hand on leave to find that everybody in England is not familiar with it.
(A passenger, Manchester Guardian Commercial, 1924)
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Notes
Department of Overseas Trade, Report on the Commercial, Industrial and Economic Situation in China for 1927 (London: HMSO, 1928) p. 27.
W.J. Moore, Shanghai Century (Ilfracombe: A.H. Stockwell, 1966).
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© 1990 Nestor Custodians Limited
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Falkus, M. (1990). After the War: An Uncertain World. In: The Blue Funnel Legend. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11476-4_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11476-4_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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