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November, 1924 MARINE REVIEW LUCKENBACH LINE # FAST FREIGHTER LEWIS LUCKENBACH WHICH RECENTLY CARRIED FROM THE PACIFIC COAST TO BALTIMORE THE LARGEST CARGO OF LUMBER EVER LOADED ABOARD SHIP the grain at 15 knots would necessitate the employment of only eight steamers, but of higher value and power, and the running of them at the higher speed would be more costly than the operation of a larger number of slower ships. Almost equally, overseas markets ac- customed to receive consignments of general cargo can afford, except in special instances, to ignore high speed in transit, provided they can rely on reg- ular arrivals and quick discharge. Herein lies to the shipowner the virtue of the cargo liner of large hold capacity, me- dium speed and a limited allotment of comfortable passenger accommodation, for the ratio of earning power to capital and running costs should be higher in such a ship than in the faster and most costly mail steamer. So much for speed. Fixing Economical Size As to tonnage, it is, other things be- ing equal, less costly to carry 10,000 tons of cargo in one full ship than in two, but there is in any trade a point at which enlargement of the floating unit ceases to be advantageous. General cargo is, and probably will continue to be, carried, as to nine-tenths of it, by the cargo liner; but this trade involves a considerable amount of human __inter- course, and from it is born a large part of the faster passenger traffic; and while a minority of passengers are content, for reasons of economy, to travel in the slower ships, the busy man or woman to whom time is a consideration and the leisured people to whom the extra cost of passage in a mail steamer is of no moment, make up between them the ma- jority of the liner’s traveling public. And if, from the business of the cargo liner, arises much of the passenger traffic of the faster steamer, the latter, again, by ther extra speed and other superiorities, attracts to herself the choicest cargo, at the highest rates of freight, with little or no damage to the business of her humbler sister. Plainly the fleet is well constituted which embraces both ele- ments in due proportion, for each is complementary to the success of the other. "Opposes Standardized Ships Some of the above arguments may have seemed to hint at standardization of ships. Owners, in ordering groups of identical vessels certainly do practise standardization to a limited extent, but under ordinary conditions there is noth- ing to recommend the mass production of standardized ships. That is a method which may be described as the com- munism of ship construction; and com- munism may be likened to a race in which, theoretically, all competitors come in first, with no prizes. A properly constituted mercantile marine or a prop- erly constituted human society must be productive of types of individual excel- lence in their particular walk of life, whether they be ships or men; and, in laying down the plans of a ship, once the broad principles of her constitution — —capacity, buoyancy, stability, and me- chanical propulsion—have been con- ceded, there the similarity of ship to ship, or at least of type to type, must terminate and the region be entered in which lies the widest imaginable diver- sity of detail and assembly, and from which have been produced the hundred- and-one excellencies of the shipbuilders’ art and craft which are afloat to-day. Britain was the birthplace of the me- chanically propelled ship; here has been generated all the best practice of the en- gineer and the naval architect. But it must never be forgotten that neighbor- ing races have time and again shown their capacity to receive British ideas in shipbuilding and to improve upon them; and this they have done partly as the result of widespread technical educa- tion, so that one is met by the uneasy thought that the common level of tech- nical intelligence, in prewar days, had reached in some countries a higher mark than with ourselves. But the British have shown themselves—there were not- able instances during the late war— capable, too, of assimilating the crea- tions of clever foreign brains and, in no long time, of going one better; and there is no reason why we should not do this in the matter of technical school- ing. Elementary science in our primary schools, of whatever type, and technical study in our secondary and_ public schools, are today receiving a measure of attention greater than ever before. Seek For Improvements This raises one other point: it seems to be of the first importance that our great shipyard and steel works should continue to keep an eye upon what their neighbors abroad are doing in the way of discovery and invention. Great prin- ciples of constructive industry—for all that they may be, for some time, used exclusively at their source—become, like great music and great architecture, the common property of mankind, Knowl- edge—for the taking—is for all; its ap- plication is the test in which the best man, the best shipyard, the best indus- trial community or nation, must in the long run win. We should carry forward the quest for improvement, in method and econ- omy, in the working of marine engines and their conquest of the natural forces opposed to them, so that the shipping industry of the empire will be helped to maintain that supremacy in the trans- port of the world’s goods which it has so long enjoyed, and which was never more jealously regarded than today.