Queen of the Seas

The ports of the U.S. were throbbing. Americans who live inland were little aware as yet of the staggering magnitude of the outthrust of American production. Pictures of the ports in action were rare--what were routine, everyday sights to thousands of citizens in the pulsing coast towns were the gravest kind of military secrets. Day after day the ships docked, loaded and moved out; and at the other end of their voyages men stacked up or dispersed the millions of packages and crates figuratively labeled: invasion-made. The U.S., might & men, was now off to war.

But the intense life of American ports pointed also to something beyond invasion--to the new fact that the U.S. is now Queen of the Seas. By the end of the year, the U.S. ships that now provision and arm America and her Allies will be half of all the shipping in the world. And the Navy, on seven seas, is now sailing in great force over waters that once never carried an American ship bottom. Far-sighted men count on the seagoing power as a great postwar fact; for one, Rear Admiral Jerry Land, wartime maritime boss, intends to hold on to enough U.S. merchant ships to haul at least half America's postwar trade in American bottoms.

And last week the House passed the $32-billion Big Navy bill, bigger by $3 billions than any previous Navy bill.

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