The Pensacola journal., 1919-11-16

come the preliminary plans, drawn as
we have seen, by the four hundred
young men in that largest draughting
room of the werld. In the mold loft
a smaller force of draughtsmen de-
velop the complete detailed plans for
the ships. This done, sections of the
ship, actual size. are drawn on the
floor of the mold loft" To monster
diagrams come skilled men with slabs
of basewood. On these, they lay off
the exact size and shape of the part
and then carpenter the wood so that it
is identical with the steel part, called
for by the plans to go into the ships.
These bits of basewood. called ''tem-
pletes'' are then nailed together, mark
ed with elaborate directions, the cab
alistic sign language of shipyard
and sent downstairs to the "fabricat-
ing room" Now, workman cannot
read a blue print; but he can under
stand a "templete" For all he has to
do when he receives the "templete"
is to lay it down upon the steel plate,
cut it along the lines of the "templete''
punch holes in the steel where holes
are punched in the "templete'' and bolt
"templete'' is Joined to another.
So the steel plates come in at one
end of the "fabricating room" meet
the 'templetes.s just as Bethlehem
the raw steel met the blue prints, and
was cut to general size; and so the
plates change form, and passing from
one worker to another, always moving
in the same direction, toward the wa
ter's edge, emerge from the 'fabri-
eating room" They are now piled in
an open space, leaving behind the steel
room with its din and c1atter and
rumbling cranes, ever honking warn
ings overhead.
One sees the shipyards-there pile
of wooden blocks, flanlxed by wooden
stages, one above the other. on which
stir men, rushing to completion the
ship which every day grows greater
before them. Here, one sees a great
freighter, almost finished, a thousand
men swarming over her. men must
have swarmed on scaffolds beside the
ipryamids. And behind it, waiting the
| day of completion lies the material
for a new ship-a pile of keel plates, a
thirty-ton bu1khead, stacks of hull
plates-all ready to be rushed onto
the way, the hour the freighter leaves
it and goes gliding down into the river
for its launching. The rattle oe rivet-
ers, as incessant as machine guns, fills
the air; cranes roll overhead, highly
from tons-heavy bulkheads to single
plates and lower them into place
where workers fall upon them hum
mering them into the ship.
A Monster Shipway.
/ Over there. one saw the way where
the new battle cruiser for our navy
| will soon have her keel laid. Building
there now is a twelve thousand ton
freighter-utterly lost in the huge
yawning way, thousand feet from
end to end and reaching UP into the
sky, as high as the roof OF an apart
ment house. One felt a thrill as one
stood in the bottom of that way, its
skeleton steel sides, making a black
tracery against the sky. From over
head so high, one might have thought
them passing airplanes, were cast
down two moving shadows. as two big
cranes running on tracks, one above
the other, passed up and down. A
cavernous, yawning space encom-
passed high by the skeleton scaffold-
ings of steel. gave one a sense of
how huge is the battleship of today
that the mould in which it is formed,
must be so great.
And then to other ways, tiny by
comparison where ten submarines
were building at once. their spiralled
skeletons. lying on wooden frames:
and over there sub. completed and
out OF water. amazingly large when
seen with all OF it visible. There the
s.wet docks to which the ships are
towed after the 1aunching-freighters
destroyers. submarines, being outfit
ted and painted. soon 70 be turned
over to their owners And slowly out
of the crashing. ear splitting confu-