As a result, unheard-of achievements in the way of production speed were soon recorded. The “Tuckahoe,” a 5,500 dead-weight ton collier, was completed by the N.Y. Shipbuilding Co. at Camden, N. J., in 37 calendar days; the “Crawl Keys,” a 3,500-ton freighter, at the Great Lakes Engineering Works, Ecorse, Mich., in 34 days. Heavy 8,800-ton freighters were built in Pacific shipyards in from 78 to 88 days, where before the war from six to ten months would have been required. The Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp. yard at Alameda, Cal., launched the 12,000-ton cargo liner “Invincible” 31 days after the laying of her keel. It was thoroughly realized that such haste would often mar the quality of the work that ships built in such brief time might well prove less efficient and enduring. But the Government and the builders realized also that it was a race with the German submarines, and that enough ships must be provided by whatever methods at whatever cost to feed and supply the Allies, and to carry and sustain the troops that would soon be crowding over.
One expedient which greatly helped toward quick production was the fabricated ship. One factor in the choice of this plan of construction, never adopted on a large scale before, was the success of the Submarine Boat Corp. in building in 1916 a fleet of 550 submarine-chasers for the British Government. These little vessels were of wood. It was obvious that steel would lend itself more readily to fabrication, and Mr. Henry R. Sutphen, Vice-President of the Submarine Boat Corp., submitted to the Emergency Fleet Corp. a proposal for manufacturing standard steel ships from the same kind of commercial structural steel that is employed for buildings and bridges. This plan was successfully carried out. Structural plates, shapes and other material were prepared at plants all over the country where they could be produced to the best advantage, and shipped to the assembling yards for final riveting together, a certain number of rivets indeed having already been driven before the material arrived. One hundred and fifty fabricated steamers of about 5,000 tons dead-weight were contracted for with the Submarine Boat Corp.'s yard on Newark Bay, N.J. One hundred and eighty fabricated ships of about 7,500 tons were ordered from the great Hog L Shipyard near Philadelphia. This shipyard, the largest in the world, with 50 ways, was created in less than six months under the direction of the engineers of the American International Corp., out of what had been a waste marsh on the shores of the Delaware River. With its ways, storehouses and workshops it covered 900 acres. Its cost was $66,000,000. On the completion of its building programme, and when its ships were no longer needed, it afforded an admirable site for a great rail and ship terminal.
Several hundred wooden steamers of a dead-weight capacity of from 3,500 to 5,000 tons were ordered by the Emergency Fleet Corp. in the war emergency. There was much criticism of this project, for the building of wooden steamers for overseas service had long been abandoned in America. Among practical men there never was any delusion that wooden steamers would be of lasting value in peace time service. As Chairman Hurley of the Shipping Board stated: “It was not contended by any responsible authority that wood ships would prove commercially advantageous, that they would be formidable competitors with the ships of the maritime powers in time of peace; but they were regarded, at least as far as the subsequent development of the wood ship programme was concerned, as mere war emergency ships.” It should be borne in mind also that when these wooden steamers were contracted for a war lasting for years was contemplated as possible, and elaborate general preparations were being made to that end. As a matter of fact few wooden steamers were completed in time to carry supplies before the signing of the Armistice, and most of the wooden craft that did get to sea were laid up as soon as possible. Many of them seemed structurally fit, but their cargo capacity was too small to permit of profitable employment. The Emergency Fleet Corp. built more of the relatively small steel ships than could be absorbed by the requirements of normal commerce. Justification for this is to be found in the inexorable needs of war. These small steel steamers of from 3,500 to 5,000 dead-weight tons are of a type very useful in limited numbers in a near-by trade, like that with the West Indies, for example. Some of them, particularly the oil-burners, are capable of engaging advantageously in transoceanic trades. Moreover, no steamers more than 260 feet in length and of about 4,000 tons dead-weight capacity could be brought out into the St. Lawrence River and the Atlantic through the Canadian canals, and it was important in the war months that the Great Lakes shipyards should be utilized.
American commerce, coastwise and overseas, is relatively a trade of rather large cargoes. It is the larger ship, with the lowest crew wage cost per ton, which American shipowners can operate to the best advantage. Nevertheless, these prudential considerations were frankly cast aside by the American Government in the crisis of the war. The authorities deliberately planned and built the kind of a merchant fleet that could be most quickly constructed in the greatest numbers and employed to the best advantage of their Allies.
After the War.—On the signing of the Armistice immediate steps were taken by the Shipping Board to reduce its programme of construction. In most cases where a contract could be cancelled at a cost to the Government less than the difference between the cost to complete and the probable market value of the ship at time of completion, cancellation was ordered. By June 30 1920 the building programme of the Shipping Board, which in Oct. 1918 had totalled 3,115 vessels of 17,276,318 dead-weight tons, was reduced to 2,315 vessels of 13,675,711 tons, of which 1,696 vessels of 11,656,961 tons were of steel construction. An important element of the new fleet not cancelled consisted of 23 passenger and cargo steamers of about 13,000 tons each, which were designed as army transports but have been adapted to commercial use. This class of ships, of which the American merchant marine still had too few, is adapted to service across the Atlantic and Pacific and to South America.
Appropriations for the Emergency Fleet Corp. up to the end of the fiscal year 1920 amounted to the immense sum of $3,255,413,024, of which nearly all was expended for shipbuilding in the war emergency and afterward. Government-built steamers cost on the average $200 to $225 per dead-weight ton. Ships of the same type were built in the United States before the war for from $60 to $70 per ton, as compared with $40 to $60 in the United Kingdom. The record of America's war effort is clearly written in the returns of the Commissioner of Navigation of the total gross tonnage of shipbuilding in the United States in the fiscal years from 1915 to 1920 inclusive:—
| Year | Gross Tonnage Built |
| 1915 | 225,122 |
| 1916 | 325,413 |
| 1917 | 664,479 |
| 1918 | 1,300,868 |
| 1919 | 3,326,621 |
| 1920 | 3,880,639 |
In 1920 a marked decline in shipbuilding set in as the Government war programme approached completion. On March 1 1921 only 330 steel vessels of a total gross tonnage of 1,434,000 tons were on the ways. More than one-half of this tonnage was of tank oil carriers. Fifty-four of the 330 vessels, representing 435,000 tons, were building on Government account, and 276, of 999,000 tons, for private ownership. This sharp decrease in shipbuilding was then manifest all over the world, and was intensified by the shrinkage of trade and the unprecedented fall of ocean freight rates, which characterized the winter of 1920-1.
Manning and Operation.—Far less formidable than the task of creating new shipyards and building 13,000,000 dead-weight tons of ships for the war emergency was the work of officering, manning and operating these vessels. In the existing merchant marine of the United States, in Aug. 1914, there was a trained personnel of about 86,000, only a small part of whom could be spared for the new overseas services which the war demanded. Moreover, many of the trained American officers were required at once in the navy and the naval reserve. Two steps were promptly taken to meet the crisis; the President, by executive order July 3 1917, suspended the provision that watch-officers of vessels of the United States registered for the foreign trade must be American citizens, and the Shipping Board established an extensive sea recruiting and training bureau for the instruc-
