Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1919-03-07
DR.. THOMAS TELLS
OF THE LEYTATHAN

Following is the text of letter print
ed in The Middlebury Campus, which
was a letter sent by President Thomas
lof the College to his young son John
with a number of interesting particu-
lars about the great steamship Levia-
than on which DR.. Thomas recently
crossed from France as transport chap
lain. The letter reads:
U. S. S. Leviathan,
Jan %, 1919.
Dear John
You are the industrious boat-builder
of our family, so l will write to you
about this boat and you can tell the
Others what you think will interest
them. A great many people have
heard of the Leviathan, probably more
than have read the chapter in the Bible
ON which she got her name Job All
She is so famous because she is so big
the biggest ship ever built Her length
is 964 feet, nearly Is of a mile /
guess it is about as far as from Hep
burn Hall out to College St, She is as
four mot ive) terrible talons on each
wide as the gym is long, From the
water line to the bottom of the keel is
Al it,, so there must be water at least
that deep for her to float. She goes
down so far into the water that when
we left the pilot off Sandy Hook the
big screws stirred up muddy water
from the bottom.
The size of big ships is usually given
in tons, not the number of tons they
weigh, but the amount of water they
displace. The tonnage of the Leviath-
an is $4,000, which is just about II
times as much as that of the first ship
in which l crossed the Atlantic, al
though that was a fair sized ship for
that time.
The Leviathan is so big she could
not go through the Panama Canal, as
it is not deep enough for her She
could not go under the Brooklyn
Bridge without scraping off the top OF
her tunnels. Of course it takes big
engines to run such an immense boat
and down in the hold there are 4G
boilers 1t takes 1000 men to shovel in
the coal and do the other work about
the engines. In all there is a crew OF
2200 men aboard. There are four big
propellers, churnirfg up the water and
driving us through the ocean about as
fast as an ordinary express train. AS
it is 300 miles from New York to
Brest, and as we make the trip i'll {
days, you see we must go about 5W
miles a day, or farther than from Mid
dlebury to Washington.
The ship was built by the German,
as a fine passenger boat and was in
Hoboken when the great war was de
clared in 1914. The Germans called
her the "Vaterland" They did not
dare send her to sea for fear the Eng
fish would capture or sink her, so she
stayed idle in Hoboken until we de
CARED war in 1917. The German crew
aboard did their best to spoil her Ell
gnes. They took out essential parts
which they thought could not be re-
placed in America, and in places they
took out steel parts and put in solI
Rabbit metal which would melt when
the enginea started. But our engi-
neers studied out all their schemes
in two months had everything in good
shape. Carpenters took out many OF
the staterooms and put in iron and
canvas hunks for soldiers. The Ii
brary was made into an Office where
there are now several officers and about
twenty clerks. The Social Hall was
made into a hospital, which is larger
than the Porter Hospital we expect tc
build.
The LeViathan can carry over l0,OOC
soldiers each trip. The largest mum
Der in one voyage was ll,478. In all
she took to France over 10000 Amer
lean soldiers before the armistiCe wa'
signed. To feed the soldiers and crew
the ships bakers make 5000 loaves OF
bread and 5000 pies a day. All the
soldiers aboard can be given a mea
within 70 minutes. There is a place il
a life boat or raft for every one and al
the call Abandon Ship" every one is
at his station by the boats in eight
minutes We have this drill every day
now, although of course we do not eX-
pect it will be necessary There uset
to be $50 naval gunners for the big
guns to shoot at any submarine which
appeared, but 1 have not seen much Of
them this trip.
am writing this letter in the big
luxurious lounging room on the "A
deck" near the bow Over the immense
fireplace is an elaborate carving of the
coats of arms of the German kingdom
and provinces. There are Prussia, Sax
ony, Bavaria, and Wurtenberg, with the
provinces Baden, Hessen, Mecklenberg
and many others. In the center is the
horrible eagle of the empire, with hi'
foot. One day I piloted a half dozer
French officers for their first visit tC
this room. wish you could have seer
their faces as they caught sight of that
monstrous eagle They laughed, thel
gestured it away in disgust, then there
were tears as they thought what il
cost to bring that eagle down, and they
rtooI 1O,u 1ool-;nrr NJ ~ IN frfttu N N nj