Ship subsidies are in various forms: premiums on construction of
vessels; navigation bounties; trade bounties; fishing bounties; postal
subsidies for the carriage of ocean mails; naval subventions; Government
loans on low rates of interest.
In Great Britain they comprise postal subsidies and naval subventions,
ostensibly payments for oversea and colonial mail service exclusively,
or compensation for such construction of merchant ships under the
Admiralty regulations as will make them at once available for service as
armed cruisers and transports. They are assumed to be not bounties in
excess of the actual value of the service performed, with the real
though concealed object of fostering the development of British overseas
navigation. Still, notwithstanding this assumption, such has been their
practical effect.
Their original objects when first applied to steamship service, as
defined by a Parliamentary committee in 1853, were--"to afford us rapid,
frequent, and punctual communications with distant ports which feed the
main arteries of British commerce, and with the most important of our
foreign possessions; to foster maritime enterprise; and to encourage the
production of a superior class of vessels, which would promote the
convenience and wealth of the country in time of peace, and assist in
defending its shores against hostile aggression.
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