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Cargo Carriers Are Unsuited for Commercial Competition N the search for economical mer- I chant ships, the government has at last decided that vessels somewhat larger than have been building must be constructed. Taking into consideration the bunker space, the size of the crews and engine efficiency, it is neither the small boat nor the extremely large ves- sel that will earn the greater profits. This does not mean that standardization does not possess merit, but merely that standardization should be concentrated on a vessel of economical capacity. During the emergency of the war, speed was the prime consideration and new merchant vessels were designed with the object in view of putting ships in serv- ice as rapidly as possible. It is now a question of building ships for the future, and that means that the ships must be designed to meet the competition of the world and earn a profit. To earn this profit it is obligatory upon American builders to produce ships that can be operated economically. Shifting of contracts by the Emer- gency Fleet corporation and drafting of some new designs for ships has been generally expected. It has been re- ported, unofficially, that the ships al- ready built and now under construction are considered too small to meet the requirements of peace-time trade. One report was that the ships building in the Hog Island yard are too small and that the government may direct that larger ships be built there. These fabricated boats now building are of 7500 and 8000 tons deadweight. The suggestion has been made that none under 10,000 tons should be built. Reports are somewhat confusing in view of certain undenied fun- damentals in the shipping world. Eng- land’s supremacy on the high seas has been due to her vast fleet of tramps, and tramps, as is well known, are com- paratively small boats. Robert Dollar, the noted ship owner and operator of the Pacific, is reported to have advocated the building of tramp steamers of 10,000 tons. Mr. Dollar is understood to have insisted that tramps of this size could be operated more economically than tramps of a smaller size and that they could find employment in most of the trades of the world. HE size of a ship depends upon the trade in which she is engaged. There would be a great loss entailed, for instance, should the United States attempt to place the giant -LEvVIATHAN, formerly the VATERLAND, in trade be- tween San Francisco and the South Sea islands. And equally foolish would it be to place one of our little coastwise steamers in the Atlantic trade in com- petition with some of the largest ves- sels afloat. What is an economic size for a ship is a problem similar to de- ciding the economic size for a manu-— facturing plant. The use to which it is to be put is the determining factor. There is competition to be met in every trade and a ship should be constructed ron Sessa i amnensi iz ‘i t ee aE a CNet EB ALC eae eae a By V. G. Iden with this essential thought in mind, The American fleet today might be said to be peculiarly rich in stand- ardized ships and especially poor in specialized ships. The 4200-ton ship, such as built on the Great Lakes is a useful vessel and one that will find profitable employment. So _ will the 5000, the 7000, 8000 and the 9000-ton ships all find useful employment. But to send one of the 5000-ton vessels, for instance, to Baltimore to load grain for Liverpool in competition with a 15,000- ton British cargo boat might not be good policy, because the larger boat would not only take the cargo but also the profit of the trip. So long as the war lasted there was no danger of competition of this nature, but with the restoration of peace the need of ships of “economical” size will assert itself. With the increased size of the new ships to be built here, there will be a redivision of tonnage space. Larger accommodations for the crew, which are promised, will offset somewhat the economy gained by increasing the size of the vessels. “Aside from improving the structural features of the ships,” said John H. Rosseter, director of operations for the shipping board, “we are also arranging or rearranging the accommodations for the men—not with an idea of pamper- ing them or making babies of them, be- cause, quite to the contrary, no such idea entered our scheme of affairs; but we do want them to be reasonably com- LEVIATHAN, FORMERLY THE VATERLAND, PROVED AND IS PROVING INVALUABLE IN TRANSPORTING AMERICAN TROOPS—SOME SEE IN THE PREDICTED DECLINE OF THE TRANSATLANTIC IMMIGRANT TRADE A DECREASED DEMAND FOR SUCH HUGE LINERS Pe. eee Peete Re ee 66 pe aie ek se,