The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

y) 4 Za SS SS iA @ lg lis kK Q Ship SSSS KSSH KN ae ler in Canada John S. Leitch, Fortified by Years of Training in BritishYards, is Solving Unaccustomed Problems at Collingwood, Ontario HEN John S. Leitch came over \ \ from England in 1912, to be- come assistant general man- ager of the Collingwood Ship Building Co., Collingwood, Ont. he brought with him a deep-grounded training that came from years of work in British ship yards. His activities had embraced all the rungs of the ladder from an appren- ticeship to the assistant managership of one of the big yards at Belfast, Ire- land. Many of the problems that Mr. Leitch has encountered and solved at the Canadian yard are apparently en- tirely foreign to those problems which his early training equipped him to face. While his experience as a ship builder and marine en- gineer had been wide and varied, the bulk freighter that plies the Great. Lakes is a type peculiar to those waterways. The reconstruc- tion of the steam- er Howarp M. HANNA Jr., bad- ly hogged in the big November, 1913, gale, bore little resemblance to any -job that he had: handled abroad. The great- est 2Ces &- caine, however, at the opening of the European war, after Mr. Leitch had been in full charge of the plant for some time. The neces- sity for furnish- ing aid to the mother country caused the com- pany to embark in the manufac- ture of shells. The plant had to be considerably altered, complete equipment in- stalled and full machine - room crews developed from_ unexperi- enced hands. That Mr. Leitch mas- tered this prob- lem, as he had those preceding, is testi- fied to by the two shell departments of this plant where munitions are being turned out in ever-increasing numbers. The examples cited furnish the visible signs of the inherent qualifications of John S. Leitch as a ship builder, a ma- rine engineer, and an executive. To his associates, these testimonials are su- perfluous. They are merely confirma- tory of what that association has al- ready taught, that he measures up fully to the big job he fills. Born of Scottish parents in New York, in 1880, John Shearer Leitch was, owing to the death of his father, sent over to Portpatrick, Scotland, where he spent JOHN 2S] LEILCE: General Manager, Collingwood Ship Building Co. 346 his childhood and early youth. He re- ceived a good education and was then apprenticed to Messrs. Robert Napier & Sons, Govan. After spending two and a quarter years in the yard, he was the successful candidate in an examina- tion open to all the apprentices, thus gaining admission to the drawing office. He obtained a very thorough grounding in ship yard work at Govan, both in the drawing office and in actual ship construction in the yard. His practical work during the day was augmented by attendance at classes in naval architec- ture, mathematics, and other subjects in the evenings and by arduous study, which, at the end of his apprenticeship, enabled him _ to start upon _ his career with much more than aver- age qualifications. In 1901, shortly after the comple- tion ‘of ‘his ap- prenticeship, he became a drafts- man with Messrs. Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richard- son, Ltd., at their Neptune works, Walker, on the Tyne, and further augmented his Clyde experience. While at the Nep- tune works he took an active part in the con- struction. “of ooa large variety of passenger and car- go vessels, cable- laying steamers, etc. On arriving at Tyneside he immediately _re- sumed his studies, first at the Walk- er Mechanics’ In- stitute and later at the Rutherford College, Newcas- tle, and was suc- cessful in passing the honors exam- ination in naval architecture at South Kensing- ton, London. Mr. Leitch would be the last to deny