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

54 match,” “stand by,” “fire.” .Now a quick pressure on an electric button fires an entire broadside. The slogan of labor unions today is “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.” Had the use of this phrase been attempted aboard ship, in the days of OLD IRONSIDES the speaker would have found it of little avail. The amount one man could do was known and tabulated. One gun could be completed and made ready for service including scraping, clean- ing and painting, every 37 days. Thus, “it was one day’s work for one man” to put “beckets” without covers to 25 “shot racks” or to “muzzle bags.” When it came to making up “rockets,” and “false fires,” the day’s quota was four sky rockets or 12 “false lights.” In short, summing up all “such operations it required 37 man- days work to make one gun ready for service. Little more remains to be said on the subject of the guns and gunnery practices of this former “redoubtable enemy of Great Britain.” Before -elosing this tale, which is neither a yarn nor a silly fable, a word of caution and another of appeal will be added. During the coming re- construction of OLD IRONSIDES one must not be too dogmatic as to de- tail; adherence to fact, wherever the data warrants it, is, however, to be recommended, provided sufficient funds are available. Hereafter at high noon,’ every fourth of July, may a salute of 21 guns be broadcast the world over from the deck of the CONSTITUTION. ' May the swelling notes of our national anthem come from her quarterdeck and reverently be listened to through- out our broad land. On the nation’s birthday, let there be projected on every screen, a moving picture of a model of the CONSTITUTION underway ‘firing a salute to the nation. Such a picture can easily be made and still not be a mere trick of photog- raphy. The model shown in one of the illustrations in part I of this article in the October 1926 MARINE REVIEW was sailed at Portsmouth, N. H. in 1922—why not again? May the readers of this tale, number them- selves with those who “seeing many things, observeth; opening their ears, heareth; whose tongues are loosed and speaketh,” to the end that the call of OLD IRONSIDES may again echo to the nation on the fourth of every July. U. oye Diesel Conversion With the successful completion and trial of the shipping board converted MARINE REVIEW freighter, WEST CUSSETTA, on Jan. 14 by the Fore River plant of the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., the fourth shipping board freighter has now been converted. The others are the motorship TAMPA, motorship UNI- col, and motorship WEST HONAKER. The first two of these were recon- ditioned at Newport News and have double acting Worthington diesel en- gines. The last two, that is the WEST HONAKER and WEST CUSSETTA, were both reconditioned at the Fore River plant of the Bethlehem Ship- building Corp. and _ have _ installed McIntosh & Seymour diesel main en- gines and auxiliaries. Complete illustrated stories ap- peared on the TAMPA and the WEST HONAKER in the December and Janu- ary numbers respectively of MARINE REVIEW. The WeEsT CUSSETTA, immediately after her trial, sailed from the army base, Boston for New York to load cargo for Australia, replacing the EASTERLING. It is said that the con- version will enable the motorship WEST CUSSETTA to reduce the cost of the trip by about $25,000. Two Vessels Launched The City OF MONTREAL, and the CITY OF HAMILTON, two large steel freighters were launched from the shipyard of the Midland Shipbuild- ing Co. at Midland, Ont., on Jan. 12, the ice from the bay having been removed by a_ powerful ice breaker. Work on both ships was started at the same time and from 3800 to 400 men have been employed on their construction. They are 238 feet over all, 38 feet in beam, and 23 feet deep, and will have a speed of 12 miles per hour. Each of the vessels is equipped with triple ex- pansion engines, and two boilers 13 feet 6 inches in diameter will gener- ate the steam. The engines were built in England and the boilers in St. Catharines. These vessels will operate on express service for the Canada Steamship line between Mon- treal, Toronto and Hamilton. The keels for two more vessels are being laid down. The new steel carferry MADISON, building at Manitowoc Shipbuilding Corp., Manitowoc, Wis., for the Grand Trunk railway was _ successfully launched, Wednesday, Jan. 19. The MADISON is similar to the GRAND Rapips launched last fall. Alexander McNab, president of the MeNab Co., formerly of Bridgeport, Conn., is now located at 1 Broad- way, New York city. February, 1927 World Shipbuilding Will Recover A sharp decline in the world’s pro- duction of merchant vessels marked 1926, launchings for that year total- ing over half a million gross tons less than in 1925, says a statement recently issued by Lloyd’s Register of shipping, covering returns from all countries for ships of 100 gross tons and upward. While the launchings for 1926, ag- gregating 1,674,000 gross tons, were only about half the total for the last pre-war year, 1913; they were less than a quarter of the figure for the post-war peak year, 1919; and, with the exception of 1923, the 1926 total is less than for any year since the war, Lloyd’s Register points out. The United States was one of the few countries to show a gain last year, in comparison with 1925. Great Britain and_ TIreland’s _ shipyards showed a pronounced loss in the to- tal of tonnage launched in 1926, and a decline, but a much smaller one, was made by the other maritime coun- tries, taken together. The comparison of the launchings for the last two years is shown in the following table, prepared by ~ Lloyd’s, the figures representing gross tons: 1926 150,613 1925 United States ........ 128,776 Great Britain & Ireland sche: Other countries ... 639,568 1,084,633 884,796 979,995 World Total 1,674,977 2,193,404 As against the drop of 518,000 gross tons for all countries during the last year, the 1925 total shows a decrease of only 54,000 tons from that for 1924. The 1926 figure, however, is only about 30,000 above the low mark registered in 1923, of 1,643,000 tons. The American. Brown-Boveri Elec- tric Corp. announced recently the appointment of Thomas R. Allen as assistant works manager. Mr. Allen will direct all shipbuilding activities under Mr. Newell, manager. The Beacon Oil Co. in adding the 435-foot steamship, the BEACONHILL, to its fleet, continues its expansion program which was started during the past year. The BEACONHILL has a deadweight displacement of 10,000 tons. She is driven by a 3000-horse- power engine at a speed of approxi- mately 11 knots, and will be used for the transportation of crude oil from the Gulf of Mexico to the Beacon re- finery at Everett, Mass.