FROM DREADNOUGHT TO TIN CAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 142, 17 June 1922, Page 17

FROM DREADNOUGHT TO TIN CAN.

» Converting Dreadnoughts into tin cans is the modern equivalent of beating swords into ploughshares, writes a naval correspondent of the "Daily Mail."

Eor some time past this strange transmutation has been going on busily in Great Britain. It consists in breaking up our unrequired warships and sending the "scrap" obtained from them into South Wales, where it is turned into the "black plates" from which, after they have been "tinned," cans of all kinds are made.

Shipbreaking, like shipbuilding, is a business of itself. Firms who engage in it have to be specially equipped for the work if they intend to do it extensively, and they must "know their market."

Before tho war, when the Admiralty wished to dispose of a ship they used to put it up to auction. Prices varied, but a vessel that cost nearly a million to build would probably be "knocked down" for about £20,000.

At the present time the market for unwanted warships is overstocked, and, as a consequence, the Admiralty is selling them at "sacrifice" prices.

The preciso sums obtained are not divulged, but one firm of shipbreakers is understood to have bought a job lot of about one hundred battleships and cruisers for something like five million pounds—a mere fraction: of their original cost.

As a business "deal" the Dreadnought is less attractive to the shipbreaker than was the old three-decker. Copper bolts and sheathing from the latter always yielded a substantial profit, while her timbers, whether oak or teak, could be "made up" into garden seats and a variety of other things. One old three-decker has been known to realise quite a comfortable little fortune for the lucky speculator who bought her.

But the Dreadnought hides no unexpected mine of treasure for the shipbreaker in her weighty hull. He knows exactly what he will find there. Reducing a warship to "scrap" has to be done mainly by skilled labour. By means of powerful acetylene burners the vessel is "sliced up" into squares measuring about live feet by two and a half feet—these being the right size for the "feeding" into the blast-furnaces in which the vessel is finally melted down. It is a wonderful sight to watch men "cutting up" an old battleship, for the acetylene flame carves through her armour plating almost as easily as a hot knife goes through butter.

After a ship has been reduced to fragments her remains are sorted over carefully, the more valuable metals being placed apart from the common steel ""scrap." The latter is mostly bought by the South Wales metal merchants at prices which are determined by current market quotations. "Scrap" of this kind has lately been sold for £"2 10/ per ton.

But in every warship there is a certain amount of costly material which fetches big figures. For example, cast steel is worth twice as much as ordinary steel, while brass gun-metal, manganese bronze, and aluminium will bring, approximately, lOd per lb.

r'rom the shipbreakcr's point of view the most valuable "corpse" is that of nn obsolete submarine, because of the large quantities of gun-metal and other expensive material it contains.