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SEP/OCT, Rage 20 1974 Ten ships line its side...one ship, rather, and nine remnants of ships ...the latter in progressive stages of dismemberment. A panorama of shipbuilding could be seen here, but it was a panorama reversed, starting with the completed ship and end- ing with a husk. From one vessel a superstructure 1s just disappearing. From another the deck is being cut. Another, a mere shell, is being stripped of its side plates. (A crane bobs up and down from the shore, plucking huge slices of steel from the boat's side oye EVUIL wove Woriicl like a dentist pulling teeth from some giant's jaw.) At the end of the line is a hull, or pan, barely above the wa- ter's edge. It is being eased into a floating drydock where it will be hoisted, drained, cut into rectan- gles with the precision of a cake, and thus pass into oblivion as a separate entity. Flanking the dock large cranes slide back and forth om a track, hoisting these slices of ship as easily as a boy at jackstraws. Three Qelisie Gers Or rack parallel tine first; on them are flat cars and gondolas, each car receiving its particular kind of material so that sorting will not be necessary later. Loaded, the cars are switched to the piling grounds where the material is stored for future use, or they are drawn up to the mills, where scrap is loaded into charging boxes to emerge once more as molten steel. As OMS SMhilj 15 COrm apart tlhe lime moves forward and another slips into place. Three times in five working days the line moves...and another ship reverts to metal and wood. The story of this transmigration of ships really began on August 18, IQAS, OM tinzatc clay A CoOmeEracte Wes entered into between the Ford Motor Company and the United States Ship- ping Board for the sale of 199 gov- ernment vessels at a total price of $1,697,470. The ships were sold "as se! and) a whe mes ash.) st hleicompiainy, guaranteeing completely to dismantle and scrap them "in such manner that they are rendered nonusable for other than scrap." The contract allowed the company, however, to utilize the engines, boilers, auxil- iary machinery and other equipment in its own plants, branches, and subsidiaries. It was stipulated that the company should not operate the vessels ex- cept to move them to the plant at which they were to be scrapped, and that it should not carry on them any cargo for its own account or for any account of others save scrapped material from such ships as might be dismantled on the Atlantic coast. Provision was made that, upon pay- ment of an additional $51,470 for each of the submarine-type vessels or $16,470 for each of. the Lake type, the company could use them for any purpose it saw fit. The submar- ine-type boats gained their name from the company which built them, the Submarine Boat Corporation of Newark, N.J. They were the largest of the ships .urchased, being 324 feet in length, and of a deadweight of 5,060 tons. The Lake-type boats, so called from having been built at ] "ie A Laker passing through the Wel- land Canal, bound for Dearborn.