Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-03-28
TRAVELS. IN PHILADELPHIA
By Christopher Morley
HOG ISLAND

MY ONLY regret was that John Fitzgerald
lVl didn't take Rudyard Kipling or William
McFee Philip Gibbs down to hog island
instead Of humble traveller whose hand
can never do justice to that marvellous epic
of human achievement. 1t would be worth
Mr. Kiplngs while to cross the Atlantic
Just to the Island.
Far across the lowlying meadows the
great fringe of derricks rises against tlie
sky Along a beautiful solid highway over
the Penrose Ferry drawbrdge and past the
crumbled ramparts of old Fort Miff1in' mo-
tors and trolley cars now go nashlng uoWh
to the huge shpyard, where eighteen monlhs
ago a truck struggled along mry country
road carrying enough lumber to put up
timekeeper's shack. The story OF that great
drama Of patient courage and efort lies
behind and underneath all one sees at HOG
Island AS we walked along the marvellous
stretch of fifty shipways. each carrying a
vessel in course of construction, and as Fltz
and I stood on the bridge or the Saluda'
one of the eleven steamers now getting their
finishing touches at the seven huge piers,
one had vision of the Island as it was
during that first winter. Engineers ana
laborers wrested with frozen swamp and
blizzard SHOWS. Workmen were brought
from Philadelphia day by day, roped in like
sardnes in open trucks arriving numbed 10
the bone. Perhaps some day there will come
some poet great enough to tell the drama
of Hog Island as it ought to be told. The
men who gritted their teeth and put IL
stawart breed that works with its hands.
AS they talk you can divine something of
what they endured.
r DON'T believe there is more trum-
| phant place on earth than Hog Island
these days. Ships are the most expressive
crea lures of mems hands, and as / stood
with Fitz on the bridge of the Saluda and
looked out through a driving rain on the
comely gray hulls of those 7500-ton cargo
resist the thought
that each of them had soul of her own
and was partaking in the general eXultation.
Eight ships going about their business
on the worlds waters. eleven at the OUTFIT
ting piers getting ready to smell blue water,
and fifty on the ways-the Island is launch
ing one every Saturday--that is the record.
Smoke was drifting from the tunnels of sew
eral, whose turbine engines were getting their
tuning up.
These thousand foot piers, each of which
can accommodate four S000-ton ships at a
time. will one day make Philadelphia one
| of the worlds greatest ports. And the thought
that every lover of seafaring will bring
away with him is that these fabricated ships,
built according to set plan with inter-
changeable parts, are beautiful ships. Hum
BILE cargo carriers, but to an untutored eye
they have much of the loveliness of form
| of some of the stateest liners. Looking into
| the newly finished chartroom, wheelroom and
| other deckhouses of the Saluda, envied
| her future master
| WYE CLIMBED down steep steel ladders to
| w look at the engine and boiler rooms. No
| grmy stokehold these shps-they are
| oil-burners One of the furnaces was lit,
| and through the half-open door one couiu
see a roaring glow of flame. In the engine
| room quiet and skillful workmen were doing
| mysterious things to a huge TURBINE. The
| shining cylinders and huge pistons of the old
| reciprocating engine We're missing in their
| place a bewildering complex of wheels and
| valves and asbestos covered piping. Looking
down from above the engine room was a
| vast echoing cavern, spotted with orange
| electric bulbs, with the occasional groan and
| humming OF electric motors and men in
| oyerals moving quietly about their tasks
The quietness of Hog Island is one of its
| 'curiously impressive features. 1t is not a
wilderness of roaring, frenZied machinery
Everything moves with efficient docility
| Even the rivetng guns that echo inside tn,
| hollow caves of unfinished hulls are hardly
4 as clamorous as had expected In the plate
and angle shops vast travelling cranes swing
overhead with the and silence of huge
| dark birds Acetylene torches, blowing
dainty little wisps of blue-gold flame slic,
through haif-inch steel plates, while the dis.
solving metal dribbles down In yellow bub.
bles and streamers and a shower of brilliant
sparks flies off gently and quietly Great
wedges descend on fiat plates and bend them
into right angles with only a soft crunch
| CtCALING tall scaifolds we clambered oyei
] y one of the half finished hulls. naked