(高级英语第一册13课.docVIP

13．Britannia Rues the Waves 1. grab the headlines 2.Yet shipping is the essential lifeline for the nation’s economy. 3.It earn ￡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. 4. But now this vital British industry is more in peril than ever before. 5.On almost all the major sea routes of the world, the British fleet risks being elbowed out by stiff foreign competition. 6.The Russians and the Eastern bloc countries who are now in the middle of a massive expansion of their merchant navies, and carving their way into the international shipping trade by severely undercutting the Western shipping companies.通过大幅度削价与西方船运公司竞争已跻身国际船运界 7．The merchant fleets of the developing nations, who are bent on taking over the lion’s share of the trade between Europe and America, Asia and the Far East—routes in which Britain has a big stake.大部分份额/ 利益攸关 8．The Britain fleet no long dominates the high sea. 公海,? 外海9. In the early 1960s, the shipping companies cashed in on government grants and tax concessions.政府资助和减税优惠 Lets cash in on the fine weather and go 10.In the19th century, competition between sailing-ships and steam-ships became cut-throat, and price-cutting ruined many long-established companies. 老牌公司 11．It was in fact a cartel, though the British ship-owners gave it the more dignified name of a “conference”. Stand the test of time. 12.take some of the risk out of the dodgy business of moving goods by sea. 13. They make it harder, perhaps, to make a good killing 大发横财/大赚一把in good times, because you have to share the trade with other conference members. But they make it easier to weather the bad times, because there is no mad, competitive scramble for the available trade. 14. the quadrupling oil price 15. By 1974, the industrialized world had begun its slide into the worst depression since the 1930s. 16. As oil demand cut back, charter rates plummeted, and the estuaries o