Los Angeles herald., 1910-09-16
BUILDER Of BIC
SHIPS TO RETIRE
Alexander Montgomery Carlisle to
Quit Active Work for
HarIand & Wolff
TWO BIG LINERS ON WAYS
Bohemian Head of Construction
Firm Is Forced by Bad
Health to Stop

DUBLIN, Sept. 15.-Alexander Mont
gomery Carlisle, the general manager
and chairman of the managing direct
ors Of Messrs. Harland 81 Wolff, ship
builders of Belfast, has retired from
his position, owing to nervous break
down.
All his working life he has been con-
nected with the great firm from which
he now retires. He Joined as pupil
apprentice in 1870, under the late Sir
e. j. Harland, the founder of the bus
mess, and passed steadily upward
through all the stages of employment
to the highest, but he has worked too
hard and with too few holidays and
nature has now reminded him of her
claims. Happily he is only 56, and he
may hope for a long autumn of life in
which to enjoy his belated holiday.
Harland & Wolffs has been de-
scribed by qualified experts as the
most complete shipbuilding yard in the
world, and it has achieved success in
spite of the fact that all its steel and
iron and coal, of which commodities
it's consumption is enormous, have had
to be imported.
Before surrendering his position Mr..
Carlisle completed the arrangements
for the launching a few months hence
of IT, two greatest vessels the oceans
have known-the White Star liners IL
tanic and Olympic, each with a ton
mage of $4,000. They are bigger than
the Lusitania $4,000 tons), but have
not her greyhound speed, having been
deliberately designed for a rate of
twenty-one or twenty-five knots. Com
fort, steadiness and accommodation,
rather than speed, were the ends aimed
at in their construction. Mr.. Carlisle
is a great believer in the big ship. Like
Lord Pirrie, his distinguished chief, he
thinks the only fault of the Great
Eastern was that she was before her
time. With adequate docks and har-
bors for their housing he thinks that
the ship of heavy tonnage is the ship
Of the future.
Mr.. Carlisle has seen a remarkable
growth in the size of the Atlantic liners
during his long career. The first
Oceanic he helped to build for the
White Star company had a tonnage OF
30O0 the second Oceanic was 1900
tons; the Adriatic, America and the
Rotterdam Quilt for different Ines)
claimed to have $4,000 tons; the Lusi-
tania and Mauretania, Graded in other
yards. crept on with $4,000. Harland
& Wolff have now replied with q
Titanic Olympic and an Olympic IT,
tanic, each of $4,000 tons. Where the
competition in size will end nobody can
presume to say.
Mr.. Carlisle has always combined IN
dustry with vivid Bohemianism. He
does not golf, he does not shoot, he
does not fish, and he has been heard to
declare that he read only one book
through in his life; but music and the
theater, and the stalls of artistic clubs
have always been the salt of life to
him. He was made a privy councillor
In 1907.
He is not in the least inclined to
claim virtues he does not possess, and
II is we'll known that he finds little
fault with an address presented to him
by an Irish friend, in which he was
described as fright honorable, right
worshipful, right trusty and well be-
loved counsellor, Trinitarian, Unitarian,
nothingarian, orator, statesman, ship
builder, slogger, patron. of many liV-
ings Che had 1900 men under him),
monarch among higher critics, pur-
yeyor of good deeds and good wine
Harland &s Wolff have built many
great liners, but no great warships.
1.-THE man who makes watch cannot
make a turret clock" is the motto OF
the firm. Otherfise, every man to his
own trade. So far as the royal navy
is concerned, they have contented
themselves with building gunboats and
constructing the machinery 4or certain
great ships of war.