Evening Star Newspaper, March 8, 1925, Page 69

ILLUSTRATED FEATURES MAGAZINE SECTION he Sundwy Shae FICTION AND —éll’( 5--8 P-.;e- WASHINGTON, D0 SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 19 | Last of Wooden War Vessels, Useless in Peace, Destroved | JFOND. )den war ves gone. A one-million- | structure, reared out of ynths of Uncle Sam's it ventured forth to re only to have its haw the RY DUFFY HI last of the we dollar labor. pay its make sers snipped of the fates. With a frame which the seas would have been proud to support, it was sentenced to five years of idleness and | desponden by the Government. | Then, anxious to be rid of this futile | burden, Uncle Sam exchanged it for & valtry $3 on condition that it| bo Gestroyed | fo for more than two years fit] | | | ruthless scissors | | 500 awaited & doom of ashes, submitting its proud interior to the hungry mag- net and the prowling crane in search of valuable prey | This is the story of Uncle Sam wooden fleet, erected during the war| under such pressure that, at its un-| expected termination, the 235 forest-| made steamer: could not bring buyer. Constructed by ordinary c penters, drafted Into the business boat-making because of the emer-| &ency, th were found by after-the- war bargain-hunters to be lacking in cargo space and to be uneconomical Steamship company officials turned | up their noses at them, and Uncle | Sam, surveying his steel array of po- | tential Methuselahs, scratched his| whiskered chin despairingly. Along came the Western Marine and | Salvage Co., with 50 acr of shipyard | at Alexandria, and, depositing $750 000, | departed wit of these glants, | each of whose naked hulls had left a| $500.000 dent in the Treasury ] This was October, 1922, and from that time until a few days ago 12 men directed the greatest destruc tive the world has ever seen Hammers crashed, chains clanked and fires crackled, just as they did five| Years before when the ships were be- | irg built. But the dismantling proc- ess had been so systematized that each vessel's contents—200 tons of | material, which had required nearly | 8ix months for installation—could | now bu yanked out in 16 working | hours In 16 hours these proud, majestic| Stcamers, each of which was destined | for a cruise of laurels. was dismem- | bered and disemboweled by avaricious | salvage truments In 16 hours these models of magnificence were | transformed into wretched hulks, as hollow and sunken as a lion’s skin. X ¥ ALL sorts of eviscerating tortures were applied to the undesirables, some of which had never felt the plash of a wave or the weight of a pound of freight. One of thes slege was the acetylene torch. the most destructive metal. | wrecker known. Spraying its potent | sparks in all directions, it cut through iron decks, huge steel columns, planes and supports. liks a pair of sclssors | through a vard of cloth. So powerful | Was Its flame that in six to seven min- utes it sizzled through 10 inches of | & solid steel pillar. | By means of th metals and mac were loosened instrument all tha | rinery of the ship | They were lifted out by traveling cranes, which plunged their revolving arms fnto the ship's | insides ard rose with 15 tons of balt | at the end of each hook. Thus a 40-ton boiler was extracted by two fraveling cranes and snugly set on| the sand for inspection A main engine, with a 78-ton avoir- dupois, was bound by a rope sus. pended from a 100-ton stiff-legwed | derrick and gaily swung to a place on shore, to await the glance of ap- proval from a contractor, steamship | oDerator, or other prospective custo. mer. Part of the deck had to be sawed off In order to gain access to some of the boilers, engines and smaller machin- ery. The work was done by gasoline drag saws, which ripped away all the lumber and wooden work. This lumber will eventually wend its way to the | Jumber mills—some of it is there al- Teady—where it will be resawed, pos- sibly for the kennel of Milady's pet poodle. It was not only necessary to tear the metal from its resting place and store it in the yard. These enormous masses had to be broken up so that they could be more readily handled For this purpose a skull cracker, a ®olid steel ball, over 4 feet in dia- meter, and tipping the scalas at three tons, was employed This unheavenly sphere was elevated to a height of 30 or 40 feet and ruth- Jessly allowed to crash down on the ‘unk pile of metal below. The ball is ritted into a crane with a cup-shaped magnet. When the crane has risen to the necessary height, the electric cur- rent which governs the magnetiza- tion of the ball is cut—and with a thunderous crash the ball descends | on the innocent pile. The process is | repeated until the desired amount of | destruction is obtained This magnet is so powerful that When the electricity is turned on and | it is lowered to duplicate the act, it | attracts the ball at a distance of 10| feet, enveloping it hungrily as it rolls into its mouth, In 30 seconds tons of | metal were reduced to a scrapheap. | — TEN ves taneously from * % | els were dismantled simul- They were towed up | Claremont, Va., where for five | years they had been brooding over their fates. Towing a steamer up the | river, even from Claremont to Alex- andria_is expensive. It cost this com- pany $600 for each steamer that was drawn up. In fact, there are still 10 vessels down in Orange, Tex., upon which no | destructive finger 'has been laid, be- | cause of the expense that towing them to Alexandria would entail, It is said that for each ship the amount | would be $8,000 There was also an expenditure to | maintain the vessels at Claremont, for the lineage of Capt. Kidd has not yet entirely disappeared. During the night, while each ship wondered whether the morrow would bring its doom, hands of modern pirates groped into its interior in search of portable material. Ia this manner more than $200,000 of equipment was stolen. Vigil was of little avail. No patrol officer’s legs were long ecnough to safe guard eight miles of water front. The result was the immediate dis- mantling of all portable material and its removal to Alexandria. A patrol fleet was also maintained to protect the vessels from trespassers. The quantity of material unrigged in junking the fleet was so extensive that, despite the almost ridiculously low prices on each tag, the Western Marine & Salvage Co. has already dis- posed of a million and a half dollars’ worth of stuff, equal to about five- sixths of its stock. The diversity and complexity of a ship's interior may be seen by the amount of material these 235 vessels yielded. A glance at the list is con- vincing that it was indeed a harvest: Twelve miles of smokestack, 200,000 tons of scrap iron and steel, 12,000,- 000 feet of cable wire, 5,000 tons of brass and copper, 2,500 miles of pip- ing, 2,260 steam pumps; 9,000 tons of water tanks, 5,000 drill presses, an- vils and vises; 1,800 steam winches, 12,000 steam and air gauges, 5,500 tons of anchor chaln, 600 tons of rope. 163 (1,400-horsepower) engines, Story of Government's Unique Forest-Made Fleet Is Brought to Close After Several Yearsin Which Doom Was Await- ed—Found to Be Lacking in Cargo Space and to Be Uneconomical—Majestic Craft, Each of Which Had Been Destined to a Cruise of Laurels. Dismembered by Salvage Instruments—Material Removed and Scattered to All Parts of Country. ; Great, steel scissors which cut up the metal Masts, spars, life boats, bot hulks prior to burning the vessels. for packing and oilers, ete., removed from t | hes 64 turbine engines, 226 brass con- densers, 452 water-tube boilers, 100,- 000,000 feet of Southern pine and Western fir lumber, 16,480,000 bolts and the life lin light' wire, stoves, with dishes, washers, bronze-mounted cannon silve: bronze gongs and 2 430 propellers, 226 for shooting , 1,130 miles of electric outfits of galley cooking utensils and rware and linen; 552 1,500 oak desks and pieces of ship furniture, The list is such as to make a Row- enite or a Seventh-day Adventist shudder at the prospect of its annihi- lation. It is us hold our the amount enough to make any of breaths to realize that of pine alone, removed from these ships, would reach three- fourths of the and that the from Nev. iz tributed, not its quality. Washington vay around the earth, le wire would extend to Carson City, ca * ok ok x E rapidity with which the ma- terial was gobbled may be at- only to its price, but to It had been made to withstand the corrosion of salt wa- ter and the violence of sea gales and storms. sels did not submersion, Moreover, some of these ves- even bear the mark of Their hulls were as dry | | | and clean on the day of destruction as on the day they sailed out of the shipyard to help win the war. Years of idleness had, however, wrought decay. Maybe their own perturbance over their fates had con- tributed. Anyway, every evidence of decline had to be effaced. A regular beauty parlor was provided to eradi- cate all traces of the passing years. A spare armature was borrowed from one ship to make up a deficiency in another. Coats of oil and polish made the difference in a reconditioned gen- erator as obvious as that in Milady after her session In the beauty shop. Seventeen men are still on the job, reconditioning the material which has not yet been sold. An interesting feature of the exodus of this equipage is the multiplicity and variety of its avenues. The ice machine of a ship may be sent to the Great Lakes to replace the wornout mechanism of a lake steamer, or it may go to a brewer in Canada, who will use it in the making of his beverages. A boiler may be swal- lowed by a slinking rum-runner or used to generate power for some law-abiding enterprise. One of the lifeboats may go to a modern Izaak Walton with a pen- chant for bass, and a three-room cabin to a family of campers on Lake Michi- gan. A ship's mast and booms may be bought by one of the largest contractors in the country, while one of its desks may settle amid the second-hand fur- niture of a newly degreed doctor. Its rope will be purchased by the biggest steel corporation in the Nation, and a bathtub by a local farmer to afford pleasure for his children. A tank will provide a tenement house with water, and a kitchen range will be used by a poor newlywed learning how to cook. * ok ok ok HUS each divested hull has witnessed the distribution of its paraphernalia, much as a cat views the dispersal of its kittens, with the hope that each will fare well in its new environment. Who can tell but that each ship, though wretched in its nakedness, still harbors in its stake-bound hull a glad- ness for the child who will gleefully splash about in its bathtub, and for the ambitious family head who will make the foundation of his fortune by this in- | vestment of his entire earnings? The hull is the only part of the vessel which cannot be salvaged. A telemotor, which cannot tempt another ship owner, will at least bo remelted into brass, but the hull of a vessel, falling to appeal to a barge operator, must meet its fiery < Partiafly | of newspaper mer | perts. | spirit, | of 240 smoldering all that is left of the proud, prepossessing million-dollar product of Uncle Sam is a heap of ash: Even this, however, is not the end Evaen the ashen remains of the once port- ly steamer are scrutinized for salvage. A huge, flat-shaped electric magnet, 5 feet in diameter, is lowered over the ruing and ewung back and forth like a pendulum to suck up the surviving metals. Six tons of this scrap iron and steel are caught by each magnetic swoop. They are carefully sorted and sent to | the ‘mills, where they are remelted for further use. Thus the last of the wooden war ves- sels is gone, but, undoubtedly, its lofty as well as maimed body, still lives in & million other forms. Find Depth by Radio. (OE of the most important develop- ments in navigation in recent times, the “fathometer,” which meas- ures the depth of the sea at the rate times a minute, was demon- strated on a trip of the Berkshire of the Merchants and Miners’ Line, be- tween Baltimore and Boston. This instrumer working on the principle of transmitting and receiving sound waves through the water, takes the place of the sounding lead, used since the early days of o n transporta- tion. Tre fathometer was demonstrated on a three-day voyage in the presence and technical ex- Throughout this period it gave soundings of one to four a second. | depending on the nature of the ocean | bed, | shown” on dismantied hudls. So the Government decreed, and ¥ in this way can the company reed from its bond. Few o can be salvaged for barges feet long, be | machinery, f these hulls | Being 251 | feet wide and sinking from | to Wide Water, Va., where they wait for 14 to 17 feet into water when devoid of | they are too deep and too | costly to operate for this purpose | Hence they are towed down the river | their cremation. This Sandy Point, Md., where, incased by chains and iron, they are pulled up on the shore. A match is set to them, and ter 12 hours of kindling, crackling and takes place at| corresponding with charts by | Geodetic Survey the depths the Coast and The distances meas- ured were from 5 to 40 fathoms, while the instrument is designed also to register up to 1,200 fathems, a mils and a half, or farther, if desired The importance of this improvement, aside from its scientific value in map- ping the ocean floor, lies In the fact that in times of emergency, when a ship is in unchartered waters or is dangerously near shore, it gives stant soundings. The old sounding lead, or even the Kelvin tube, requires from 10 to 20 minutes, and must be | handled by experienced men. The sonic system developed by the United States Navy can be operated only by a trained man The fathometer radio principle. An oscillator fixed in the hull of the vessel transmits sound waves which are reflected from the ocean bed to a receiver. These are amplified and transferred to a clock-like dial, giving instant depth readings with a variation of less than a fathom. The fathometer operates automatically by pushing a button. By comparing the fathometer read- ings with Government charts, it is possible in many instances not only to determine the position of the ship when other means fail, but also to find the direction of travel accordinig to_the variations in the bottom. The fathometer has been tested in operation on the Berkshire by offi- cials of the United States, British, Italian and Japanese governments, and, while their official reports have not yvet been delivered, it is under- stood that their findings were satis- factory operates on the A New System. SOON we shall no longer compute distances in inches, feet, yards, rods and miles, and ounces and pounds will be no longer used as units of weight. This was the confident prediction made unanimously by the members of the Metric Aesociation, who met in conjunction with the As- sociation for the Advancemen: of ence It is only a matter of time, declared Dr. George F. Kunz of the American Museum, expert in precious stones and president of the Metric ssociation, before this country will officially and generally adopt the sim- ple and easily handled system of measurements now current on the continent of Europe. Centimeters and decimeters will replace our inches and feet, the yard will be supplanted v the meter, the mile by the kilo- meter, the ounce by the gram and the pound by the kilo. The number 10 will be the common multiple for all the tables, and school children will no longer have to remember that a mile contains exactly 1,760 yards They will only have to learn that 10 milligrams make a centigram, and | that 10 centimeters make a decimeter. Our money js already standardized by this metric system, making account- ing far easier here than it is in Eng- land, where they still stick to their antiquated, farthings, pennies, shil- lings, crowns, sovereigns and guinea: Post Held by Secretary of State Is Short Step From Highest Honor BY OLIVER P. NEWMAN. F Charles Evans Hughes thought that the lightning of political history ever struck thrice in the same place he would probably be holding tight to his chair in the State Department instead of retir- ing voluntarily to seek more fame and fortune at the bar. Before saying good- bye to President Coolidge he could have looked back and observed two merr step- ping from the Secretaryship of State into the two jobs that Mr. Hughes prizes above all others and just barely missed—President of the United States and Chief Justice of the Su- preme Court. And as he noted the eventful years of the period during which John Marshall achieved one and James Madison the other (both right out of the office which the Secretary is now quitting), Mr. Hughes would have smiled with amused but sincere in- terest at the quaint, picturesque, graceful figure of Dolly Madison, the first of the two President-makers of the fair sex, whose personality is printed large upon the early history of the country. Queen Dolly, as they called her in those gay days of “Washington in the wilderness,” holds a record never even remotely approached by any other woman. For 16 consecutive years she was the chatelaine of the White House, where this once demure Quaker maiden blossomed into a bright, laughing, friendly, Jjoyful, tactful hostess, with bewitching black curls nodding about her smil- ing countenance, beneath bright-col- ored turbans with wide streamers of satin ribbon. It was a crinoline time, a patches and powder time, a hoop-skirt time, when the dainty ladies of the little Capital flitted from great house to great house, from the President's “castle” to Gadsby’s, the Indian Queen and even to O'Neale's tavern, or out the muddy road to Georgetown, that aristocratic old village whose assem- blies were the most select and gayest of any socfal affairs of the neigh- borhood. The statesmen occupying places in Congress and the Supreme Court,| lonely and dispirited in the swampy | wilderness that was a city in name only, welcomed the fair creatures and | it became almost a daily recreation for half a dozen or more of the pretty young matrons and maidens of Doll Madison's train to visit the Senate, the House and the Supreme Court room, where seats were promtply | provided among the officials, and| where whispered gossip and flirtation | were carried on behind the backs of | daintily mitted hands, while the af-| fairs of state went forward as if there were no intruders present. It is related that on one occasion Mistress Madison and a bevy of gayly bedecked ladies entered the Supreme Court room just'as the great Pinck- ney had concluded an argument, whereupon he rose and repeated his address, changing it only by the dig- nity, ceremony and gesture with which it was delivered. John Mar- shall is reported to have suppressed a smile behind his grim countenance, but to have offered no objection to the repeétition. The very heart and soul of all such life, vivacity, gayety, visiting, gos- siping and pleasure-seeking was happy Dolly Madison, who dearly loved the little daily social diversions, the talk, the balls, parties, dresses, turbans and all the other frivolities of the time, and was content to leave serfous affairs to the men whose busi- ness it was to attend to them. * k% % TURBULENT, stressful time, with men of violently opposing be- liefs tearing at each other’s throats, marked the advent of Dolly Madison into officialdom at Washington, when Jefferson became President in 1801. A woman less tactful, less generous and less amiable in her whole outlook on life could easily have wrecked her husband's career. Instead she ameliorated the distrust and dislike of Jefferson among his enemies and made so many friends for “Little Jim” Madison that his “succession” to the Presidency eight years later became natural and logical. Jefferson and Burr had tied for President in the electoral college, with Adams and Pinckney only five votes behind them. The House of Representatives had spent a week on the contest, finally electing Jefferson President and Burr Vice President. Only the Senate wing of the Capitol was completed and the House met in cramped quarters theré. Several members were sick but to prevent any advantage by any candidate they had their beds moved into the House chamber and occupied them during the session, which was continuous and ended only after 36 ballots had been taken. The result infuriated stanch little John Adams, the last Federalist, who was indignant at being cut off with only one term, especially by Jeffer- son. The election had been reached only a few days prior to March 4, and Adams and his friends set about to do all in their power.in the short time remaining to tie Jefferson’s hands. The Democratic-Republican sweep had elected a Congress in sym- pathy with Jefterson's ideas, but the old, “lame-duck” Congress was Fed- eralist and anti-Jefferson. Even the House which had elected Jefferson was hostile and had taken him only in preference to Burr. The Senate was strongly against him. With a fuming, lame-duck President in’ the White House and an antag- onistic Congress in_the Capitol, the Adams people turned to the Federal courts for protection. Up to that time even the Supreme Court had amounted to little. John Jay, the first Chief Justice, had resigned be- cause the position gave him no op- | portunity to exercise his talents. He preferred a place in the cabinet, the governorship of New York er a for- eign mission, all of which he received. The giant intellect of John Marshall had not yet been directed to the task of interpreting the Constitution. In those last, hurried days, while | Abegail Adams rushed her packing in the White House, from which she was moving so unexpectedly after only four months' occupancy of the damp, unfinished, sparcely furnished structure, John Adams and the last of the Federalist old guard were packing the Federal courts. Bills had been rushed through greatly in- ereasing the number of judicial dis tricts and providing three judges for each, with an appropriate number of attdrneys, clerks and marshalls. So short was the time and so feverish the desire to block Jefferson that the actors in this tense drama re- mained on the job right up to mid- night on the night of March 3, 1801 Adams stayed in his library all the evening, making out nominations of judicial officials and sending them to the Senate, which continued In ses- sion to confirm the appointees. In the office of the Secretary of State that official was also on the job, making out commissions as rap- idly as he was advised by the Senate that confirmation had been voted. This race against the clock ended only when Levi Lincoln, who was to become Attorney General the next day, stalked Into the office of the Se retary of State with Jefferson wateh In his hand and called time. Half a dozen commissions, already signed by the President and Secre- tary of State, were lying on the desk, awaiting the insertion of the ap- pointee’s name. And who was this determined, tenacious Secretary of State? No- body but that same John Marshall, (Continued on Second Page.)