The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1904-04-24
Great Numbers Of Specialists
Look After the Various III
nesseS Of Steam and Sailing
Graft


The big dock at Agiers, La. was
built at Sparrows Point MARYLAND
and lowed down the coast and through the Gulf of
Mexico to for the sick ships that may reach
New Orleans This and the floating docks at Ber-
muda and Havana the largest ever built and
are able to lift bodily the largest battleshps The
Bermuda and Havana docks were built in England
and towed across the ocean by two ironc1ads The
Havana dock So days making the trip Of 6.5oo
miles
Ihe ship physicians are not velvet fingered and
their scapels are hammers and steam-driven drills
Hundreds of them hang like flies on single big
patient. There is a rivet to be put in here
a bent plate is to be Strengthened there and gear
of all sorts is to be put in order
In any case she is put into the hospital and the
trained nurses are called in-in overals and iun-
pers-and they pound and drill and hammer and
make uncanny noises till she is all we'll again and
allowed to ride free-ready to breast the storms and
the seas till she shall again fall sick
Each one Of the ship physicians is specialist
There is no general practitioner and the trades rep
resented in of the big ship hospitals are
diverse. In the old days, when nothing but wooden
ships built the shipwright the caulker painter
and sailmaker were about the only trades repre-
sented.
In these days there inspectors, painters black
Smiths foundrymen, coppersmiths, plumbers boiler
makers driers, shipjoiners, cauIkers, patternnak-
ers pumpmen, GLACIERS, locksmths, machnists, dec
orators, upholsterers, men who repair kitchen
ranges and those who lay tile floors
Each IS physician with speciality, and as with
the specialists who doctor men, their fees vary with
the class Of work they do From the 1aborers whose
daily wages amount to $I.5o, to the inspectors who
receive much as $4,000 a year, there is every
gradaton of fee The electrician earns So dav and
he is perhaps the whose fee is highest among
the regular physicians of ships. The inspectors and
men who make the surveys to decide upon the exact
a1ment OF the patient may be called the consulting
physicians, their fee is higher
In some Of the ports, that at Horta Fayal there
IS no drydock where ailing ship may be cured
But even in such places the sailorman finds way to
apply fguratve bandages Some months ago the
British ship Undaunted was towed into the har-
Dor at Faya rudderless and with her propeller gone
Upon her arrival her master cabled the owners to
forward from England a new propeller and other
material necessary to put her in shape
In two weeks the new arrived. Meanwhile
the bow of the disabled steamer had been heavily
loaded with ballast Of stone and coal sinking it al
most to the waters edge and fetching the stern well
out of the water. All made ready for the new
propeller end when it arrived it was placed on a
barge and towed under the stern Of the ship It was
hoisted into place, fastened to the shaft the ballast
shifted to bring the invalid into normal posi-
ton, and the well-named Undaunted was again
ready to put to sea.
1t IS impossible to make any accurate estimate
of the number of ship hospitals or the number Of
specialists who for the invalids of the sea In
the great yards at Newport News, however. there
are more than 5000 men regularly employed whose
business is to for the sick ships as we'll as to
build new ones In almost every port where shiDs
call there are some appliances for the relief Of
and Fba of H.
there are probably 6o,ooo ship physicians from the
laborer about the yards to the expert who places
the blocks under the ship when she is taken into
the hospital This is work which requires the
most delicate care for if the supporting blocks are
not properly placed the ship may be ruined bv the
sprlnging OF the keel plates and twisting loose Of
rivets
There is one guild which forms curious lot Of
specialists. 1t consists Of whose entire time IS
given to removing seaweed and barnacles from the
ships bottom. They form union by themselves
and while technically they are ships painters" they
are more properly ship scrapers and barnacle re-
movers.
And after all there is little difference between the
man who becomes i'll and has to go to physician
to be cured and the ship which meets disaster and
has to go to the hospital The master of a shD
knows her moods, and she falls into tantrums anI
Mysteries till the proper guiding hand is at the helm
The canny engneer-the Gasgie man-knows the
whims of his machinery, and with a touch in the
right place when the main eccentrics start their
quarrel with the sheaves,' sets all right and the
girl" behaves herself and carries her through
thirty thousand miles OF trackless ocean The ship
with the proper hand at the Wheel sings a happy
song:
She's the Lucy Foster; she's saer out O. Gloster;
She's the handsome lady-an' she's goin' home"
TIA