The Daily Alaska empire., 1951-10-08

A Recent Advertisement of the Alaska Steamship Company presents the silhouettes of the 20 vessels the company is operating in the the Alaska service.
 This is about the same number of vessels the Alaska Line operated tsn years ago, just before Pearl Earbor, but there is a vast differ enCe between the present and the pre-war fleets.
 There is, for one thing, the mat ter of tonnage Todayss Alaska steam fleet totals nearly 95,o0O gross tons compared with some 69,- o]0 tons ten years ago. Today's vessels are bigger, and nearly all of them are freighters.
 Ten years ago almost half The company's vessels were passenger a.aips and the passenger ships ac- counted considerably more than half tie total tonnage.
 Now the company has only four passenger. ships-20 percent of the total number of vessels and approxi- mately g percent of the total ton mage.
 This decline in passenger vessels in the Alaska trade is, of course, merely a reflection of the disap- l,earance of American passenger ships and passenger ships routes around the entire coast of the United States.
 The Standardization that has taken place in American cargo ves- sels in recent years is strikingly shown in the silhouettes of todays Alaska Line fleet.
 This is a trend that started back during World War I, but even so recently as 10 years ago there re- mained great deal of individu- ality in the freighters on the AL aska routes. Today there are couple of types of freighters, but within the types each vessel is as like the next as two sockeye salmon in a gillnet.
 The smaller and more numerous of these freighters in the Alaska trade are the Knot or Coastal type vessels which are 323 feet in length and measure 2,805 tons gross. They are powered with 1,700 horsepower diesel engines which do not drive them overly fast.
 This. diesel power is also, some thing of an innovation. Ten years ago there wasn't a diesel vessel in the Alaska Line fleet.
 The Knot ships were built during World War II at shipyards on the Great Lakes and the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coasts.
 Most of them were named for var ious knots, splices, bends and hit ches-Acorn Knot down through Yardarm Knot; Hawser Splice through Span Splice; Anchor Bend through Tucked Bend, and Anchor Hitch through Timber Hitch.
 Another sizeable group of the same type of vessel got names start ing with the word coastal-Coastal Adventurer through Coastal Viking and including Buccaneer, High flyer, a Rambler and Ringleader.
 The Alaska Line presently oper- ates 10 of the type of vessel, eight of them dry cargo ships and two refrigerated ships.
 The Liberty Ship of World War II is the second type common to the Alaska routes and the Alaska Line operates four of them. They are larger than the Knot ships just over 1000 tons gross with a length of 422 feet and powered with 2,5O0 horsepower reciprocating steam engines.
 The Liberties were named for var ious men-John H. Quick and George D. Prentice and so forth put the Alaska Line has renamed 5oth the Knot and Liberty ships it aas purchased. They are given the names of Alaskan rivers such as Susitna, Nadina and Cinema.
 Along with the new, standardized freighters. the Alaska Line still has