New-York tribune., 1918-07-05
Hundred Ships
Is Days Toll
OfLaunchings
Great Lakes Get First New
Vessel Just After
Midnight

Celebrating the striking of its stride
month, the Emergency Fleet Corpora
tion of the United States Shipping
Board made grand Fourth of July
splash all around the water frontiers
of the republic yesterday by putting
overheard approximately one hundred
ships from almost as many yards.
The first dash of the splash was on
the Great Lakes at 12:01 q. m, when
3,4O0-ton steel cargo boat slid into
the water.
The next one was precisely at sun
rise, when the Standard Shipbuilding
Company launched 7,500-ton ship at
Shooters Island, New York Harbor.
Then for the next twelve hours
steel and wooden ships of from 3,400
to 10000 tons hit the water in clouds
of smoke and spray at the rate of one
every seven minutes, while not less
than million joyous spectators
shouted approval of the greatest and
most substantial spectacle that ever
graced Fourth of July. In all the
annals of shipbuilding there was never
anything like it.
The Shores of Puget Sound, San
Francisco Bay, Los Angeles, the Coluna-
bia River, the Gulf of Mexico, the Del
aware, Chesapeake Bay, New York Bay
and all the coasts of New England, Lake
Superior, Lake Michigan, the Detroit
River and Lake Erie were laved by the
backwash of the great ships of the Lib
erty fleet rushing to their proper ele-
ment.
Wood and steel We'd with each other.
there being about fifty ships Of each
class.
The total tonnage was about 100000
tons dead weight.
Previous Records Broken
Not ship was delayed to add its
launching to the ship day of days. June
construction beat all previous Amerl-
can records with more than 280,O0O
tons, the final week witnessing the de-
livery of 10000 tons.
Yesterdays launchings, therefore, are
not q piece of deceptive staging, but
represent a big gain in shipbuilding,
men and management everywhere hav-
ing driven to the limit of human skill
and endurance to launch as many ships
as possible on July that were sched-
uled for later dates.
The ships put into the water yester-
day are greater in tonnage than that of
two average years prior to 1915 in the
United States. They represent almost
half as much as Great Britain was wont
to build in a whole year.
They are the product of a hundred
ways. More than eight hundred ways
will soon be holding building ships.
While the merchant ships--colliers,
refrigerators, tankers, cargo boats
were tumbling into the water, fourteen
destroyers we're launched from four
yards on the Atlantic and the Pacific.
They will help to make the seas safe
for the freighters OF the same natal
day.
Several Steel Ships
Among the specially notable achieve
ments of the day were those of the
Submarine Boat Corporation OH New
ark Bay, which launched three $500
ton steel cargo boats; the Union Iron
Works at San Francisco, three of ii 800
tons each; the Moore & Scott yards,
Oakland, Cal, three refrigerators of
9,400 tons each; the Los Angeles Ship
building Company, two cargo boats of
5000 tons; the Skinner Eddy yards,
Seattle, two $500 ton cargoes. A num-
Der of other yards launched two ships
each of smaller tonnage than the fore
going.
1t was great day for ships and by
the same token great day for dem
ccracy.
And shipbuilding will be resumed
Continued on page four