Ugly Ducklings

World War I caught the U. S. with a miserable little merchant fleet of 430 cargo and passenger ships. Foreign bottoms carried over 90% of U. S. overseas trade. When the Allies set up a cry for ships to offset U-boat sinkings in early 1917, the U. S. responded with its Bridge of Ships. The program, carried out by the U. S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corp., built 2,316 ships--the biggest, fastest shipbuilding program ever undertaken.

Nub of the emergency program was Hog Island, on the Delaware River just below Philadelphia. There rose the world's largest shipyard: 250 buildings, 80 miles of railroad tracks, 50 shipbuilding ways, 28 outfitting berths. Hog Island was not strictly a shipbuilding plant but a ship-assembly plant. Most Hog Islanders were identical.

Their parts were fabricated in inland mills shipped to the yard for assembly. The first keel was laid Feb. 12, 1918, the last 22 months later. The first ship was launched Aug. 5, 1918--less than eleven months after the yard was begun. At peak production, a keel was laid every five and one-half days. One day in 1919 five ships smoked down the ways into the Delaware in 48 minutes, ten seconds.

Altogether, the yard turned out 122 ships. But not one was finally delivered to the Government until two months after the Armistice. Hog Island's effect on the war was more psychological than practical.

All that remained of Hog Island shipyard last week were a few tag ends of foundations rotting in the water. But scores of squat, ugly Hog Islanders still plowed the seas, slow but effective Marthas of a U. S. merchant marine now seven times larger than at the outbreak of World War I. And last week Franklin Roosevelt gave the signal to build the Hog Islands of World War II--new yards to assemble 200 identical 7,500-ton, prefabricated cargo ships, to cost from $300,-000,000 to $350,000,000.

These ugly ducklings would help solve the shipping shortage at war's end, said the President. What he did not say was that they could also be of great help to Britain in replacing ships lost to Nazi submarines.

The proposal calls for the first ship to leave the ways within twelve months, the last a year later. If it goes through on schedule, it will far surpass Hog Island's record.

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