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GAS-DRIVEN OCEAN FREIGHTERS
THE BOATS SPRING UP LIKE MUSHROOMS
Literally in a night these inexpensive freighters take shape, and in the course of two weeks to a month at most they are
ready for launching.
help the craft to a rapid passage. The
famous submarine merchantman Deutschland
is a motorship of the Diesel type.
Although old, dilapidated sailing ships
are selling readily just now for $250,000
(worth only $15,000 before the war) fine,
large wooden motorships, new and fit,
are now turned out, almost overnight, in
Pacific Coast yards, for from $150,000 to
$200,000. The fuel consumption of a
vessel of this latter type costs only about
one-fifth that of a steamship, and cargo
capacity is greater, with a much smaller
crew.
Here is an instance showing how builders,
as well as owners and operators, are
making massive fortunes out of motorships.
Before the war a firm of brothers
operated in Seattle a little one-horse shipbuilding
yard. They were quick to see
the possibility of the return of wooden
sailing ships, powered with oil engines.
They mortgaged their homes, borrowed
all the money they could, hired ship carpenters,
and put every cent they had in
one wooden motorship. At a banquet
given in the little yard in celebration of
the launching they sold the boat for
At-
$90,000, a price which enabled them to
redeem their homes and to leave sufficient
surplus to build other craft of the kind
for sale at even greater figures. They
are keeping on at such a rate that a year
from today these enterprising brothers
will be rated as millionaires.
A standard for motorships of the
wooden sailing vessel type, having auxiliary
power, is about as follows: length.
250 feet; breadth, 43 feet; depth of hold,
18 feet; moulded, 21 feet; gross tonnage,
1600; net, 1300: dead weight tonnage,
2600; cubic capacity, 123,489 feet approximately:
draught, 20 feet; masts, 4;
decks, 1 : 'tween decks, beams only; deck
plan, clear; poop, 42 feet: forecastle, 58
feet: bulkheads. 1 ; holds, 1; bow ports,
2: hatches, 2, 14x32 feet; boilers, 1
auxiliary; working pressure, 150 lbs.:
heating surface, 1100 feet; furnaces, 1;
grate surface, 19 feet; electric lighted,
and speed eight knots. These are the
approximate figures of the Peninsula
Shipbuilding Company of Portland, Oregon,
one of the biggest building concerns
of the kind in the business. Ships of this
standard are equipped with twin Diesel