Carolina watchman. [volume] (Salisbury, N.C.) 1871-1937, 1936-06-12
TODAY AND
TOMORROW
BY
FRANK Parker STocKBRDGEC

OJJFEN arrives
saw the biggest ship ever built
come into New York HarDor on her
first voyage, the other day. I have
seen all of the other big ships of the
past forty years and travelled on
some of them, but the Queen
Mary is the biggest and the fastest
of them all.
A great deal has been said and
printed to the effect that big ships
in the thousand-fcot class are I'M
economical. They cost a lot to
build, of course. The Queen Mary"
cost about 100000 But ship
ping experts tell me that with full
oads of cargo and passengers. these
big ships are more profitable to
operate than smaller ones.
| would like to see our own
country build a ship as big as the
Queen Mary"
PORTS :, :. channel
There are very few seaports in
the world into which ships of the
size of. the Queen Mary the Nor
mandie" and the great German and
Italian liners can enter. From the
ocean up to her dock, the Queen
Mary" had only five feet of water
under her keel, most of the way.
She would not have had that much
would not have been able to en-
ter New York at all---if it had
hot been for the foresight Of a
New York merchant named, Am
brose, to whose memory a monu-
ment was unveiled at the Battery
the day the Queen Mary arrived.
Mr.. Ambrose devoted much of
his life to urging the dredging Of a
deep, straight channel from the sea
into New York at all-if it had
the old bed of the Hudson River,
the Ambrose Channel, 40 feet deep
at low tide, is all that has kept
New York from yielding its supre-
macy as a seaport to Boston.
The Erie Canal, which gave an
easy and safe water-route between
the Hudson River and the newly
opened regions of the West, more
than 100 years ago, started New
York on its way to becoming the
nations largest city. Up to then
Philadelphia and Boston were both
larger. The Ambrose Channel has
enabled New York d hold first
SCRAPPING Of ships
Some day they will scrap the
Queen Mary" The great "Maure
tania" has just been junked, and
the giant Majestic is on her way
to the ship-breakers. In the past
20 years a dozen giants of the ocean
have been broken up, because it no
longer paid to run them.
Our town "Leviathan," which
was the German-built 'Vaterland
before the war, a sister-ship Of the
ssBerengaria," is due for the scrap
yards before long. The "Levia-
than" however, has earned her keep
since the United States Govern
ment took her over as a prize OF
war in 1917. She carried more
than 5000 American soldiers every
voyage to France during the war,
and the boys Of the Rainbow Di-
vision still have an affection for
the old 'Levi Nathan" as they
nicknamed her.
SIZE 1858 miracle
The biggest ship afloat before
the Queen Mary was the German
bilt Majestic" 915 feet long. The
~Queen Mary" is 1903 feet longer
than that. But II years ago, in
1858, British ship builders in one
lump launched a ship that was
nearly twice as long as the biggest
then afloat. The jump from the
ssPersia," $50 feet, was as much of
a miracle then as it you'd have
been today had the Queen Mary
been 1900 feet long.
The "Great Eastern was re-
garded as the Eighth Wonder of
the World, but she wa too awk-
ward and too slow to be profitable.
After a few voyages between Liver
pool and Boston, and a brief ex-
perience in laying the first trans
Atlantic cable, she wound up her
career ingloriously, for many years
as a floating hotel anchored off an
English coast resort, and then as a
coal hulk in the marbor Of Gilbral-
tar, and finally was scrapped for
old metal.
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