Three Cs for the Seven Seas

Beginning this week, U.S. merchant ships will be launched at the rate of one a day.

This was news that the British were delighted to hear last week from the U.S. Maritime Commission. But the bulk of the Maritime Commission's new ships will be followed by few seamen's benedictions as they put out to sea.

Most of them are "Liberty" or EC2 ships, stopgap craft, built to beat Germany. Their commercial life expectancy is only five to seven years--about a third that of normal merchant vessels. No shipowner gives a nautical damn about their lack of line. But he does complain about their waddling gait (ten to twelve knots), their ancient innards (old-style reciprocating engines), and most of all their appetite (estimated 40% more than the oil rations required by a turbine-driven ship).

Admiral Emory S. ("Jerry") Land, the tough little blue-eyed skipper of the Maritime Commission, has an answer to all that: "The Liberty ships are slow, but hell, they'll float, and by God they'll get there." A modest man, Jerry Land never adds that you couldn't say as much for some of the strange and wonderful aggregation of emergency merchantmen of World War I. There were ships of green wood that seasoned in transit, and took water with seams agape in seas like a mill-pond.*

There were concrete ships that never got under way and steel ships that spat rivets like raindrops. But somehow, despite such costly barnacles, the U.S. as a carrier during World War I outdistanced Germany, Norway, France, remained second only to Great Britain.

After Hogs, Ducklings. Jerry Land's fleet is designed to do a lot better than its predecessor, next year and for years to come. By the end of 1943, when the current U.S. Maritime Commission's build ing program is completed, the U.S. merchant marine is expected to gross about 18,000,000 tons (nearly equal to Great Britain's tonnage at the outset of this war; twice the size of the U.S. merchant marine at the end of the last war); and 50% of U.S. foreign trade will be carried in native bottoms. Those bottoms will not all be such jerry-rigged jobs as the EC-2s. Some of them will be the best merchant men in the world.

Abuilding now in 39 of the nation's shipyards are 711 merchant ships. They are being built fast--two to three months ahead of schedule--and they are being built well. The pattern of construction has been standardized, and U.S. merchantmen now being built have a uniformity like that of U.S. cars.

The C-ships of the Maritime Commission are as durable as the Hog Islanders of World War I, much more finely equipped and finished, and a lot more economical. Divided into eight watertight compartments, they will stay afloat even when a quarter flooded, are fitted with gun supports and housings for submarine-detection apparatus. The gun supports are as handy as Jerry Land knew they would be. Arming C-ships (see cut, p. 71) against U-boats is no trick at all.

Baby of the new fleet is the C1, 413418 ft. long, of 7,500-9,000 deadweight tons, a cruising range of 10,000 miles, a speed of better than 14 knots.

Longer by 41-46 ft. is the 9,000-ton C2, which can butt along at 16 knots, go 16,000 miles without refueling.

Biggest of the new C ships is the C3, (11,975 tons) which can clip along at 17 knots. The U.S. has taken over seven of the 18 C-3s built to date, to convert into small aircraft carriers for the Navy and Great Britain. Conversion takes only about four months. One of the C-3s, now the U.S.S. Long Island (see cut), is already at sea.

All Commission ships are powered with steam turbines or diesel engines, cost from $2,000,000 to $2,800,000 apiece.

And a Mixed Barnyard. Jerry Land's plans call for many another type of ship. On the Maritime Commission schedule are fast 17-knot tankers, whose speed is no great advantage in peacetime--tankers are seldom in a hurry--but vital in war, when the Navy doesn't want to wait for its fuel. Also scheduled are 195-ft. seagoing tugs, barges made of concrete, small boats of all varieties.

U.S. shipyards have already turned out 118 of the 1,600 vessels called for by the end of 1943. The Commission's original long-range scheme, for the production of 500 standard-design ships in ten years, has long since been overlapped by the accelerated long-range program, which upped production to 100 ships annually, lowered the time limit to five years. Additional new programs call for 200 Liberty ships, 227 Lend-Lease vessels, 541 emergency and standard ships ("The bridge of ships"), 16 Great Lakes ore carriers, many a coastal craft. Soon to be included either in the Maritime Commission or the Navy program are the Sea Otters (TIME, Sept. 29), now undergoing rigorous tests in the Atlantic.

The business of creating such a merchant fleet would send a lesser man than Jerry Land gibbering to the hills. He takes it all in stride, mightily helped by craggy, pipe-smoking fellow Commissioner Howard L. Vickery, who is largely responsible for construction. This week Jerry Land felt good about production, but a little wary too. Like any other defense administrator, he didn't know when he might be called to the White House, chucked under the chin and told to step up his shipbuilding still further for the sake of some ally.

* Most celebrated example: the Dumaru, which sank in an electrical storm in the Pacific. The crew of one of her lifeboats sailed 1,300 miles to the Philippine Islands, one of the longest open-boat trips since Captain Bligh's 3,618-mile voyage in 1789. The starving survivors kept themselves alive by cannibalism. The menu: the chief engineer and a fireman--who (said the survivors) died of their own accord.

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