Full Steam Ahead?

When the Korean War broke out, the last thing the U.S. public worried about was a dearth of merchant ships. After all, the U.S. had a mothball fleet of 2,154 World War II cargo vessels ready for action on a few weeks' notice. But last week it looked as if the time had come to start worrying about cargo ships too. Vice Admiral Edward Lull Cochrane (Ret.), Federal Maritime Administrator, warned that the U.S. did not have enough fast cargo ships. Of the mothball fleet, 1,528 were lumbering 10-knot Liberties. Only 205 were 15-knot Victory ships and last week 130 had already been put to work on the Korean run.

But even Victories were no longer fast enough, said Admiral Cochrane, as he steamed up with the beginnings of a big-scale shipbuilding program last week. He wants Congress to appropriate $250 million for 50 newly designed cargo vessels which will steam much faster than 18 knots, be the speediest cargo ships ever built.

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