NEW CLYDE SHIPS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 181, 2 August 1941, Page 5

NEW CLYDE SHIPS

THREE MILES OF 'EM ONE YARD'S 7 A YEAR A COMFORTING SPECTACLE (By Air.) LONDON, July IS. One of the grimmest phases of the Battle of the Atlantic is being fought by £he hammers and anvils and pneumatic drills of men who have never been to sea. One out of every three ships that sail the ocean highways to-day is baptised by the murky waters of the Clyde, writes Virginia Cowles in the "Sunday Times." Xot only are warships built there but the merchant ships on which the life of this island depends, During the past year the Merchant Fleet carried goods to and from British ports totalling in value £1,500.000.000. I travelled up the Clyde for five miles in a police boat. It is an astonishing sight. Along the river banks huge cranes are silhouetted against the sky; looming up between them you see the skeletons of ships of all sizes and kinds and in every stage of construction. Some have only the keels laid down; others look like gigantic halfwoven baskets; stUl others glisten in the sunshine waiting onlv for a final coating of camouflage before slipping into the sea lanes of the Atlantic. For three solid miles the framework of vessels dots the horizon. The Scottish police officer steering our boat commented on the numbers with satisfaction: "Even a sausage factory couldn't do better," he said proud Iy. Rapid Repairs The drama of the Clyde lies not only in the new ships being constructed, but also in the veterans. wounded in battle, which have managed to make their way back to port for repair. We passed many war-scarred ships. Some had been damaged by torpedoes; others had been hit by bombs. Most of the shipyards are old family concerns, and many of the workers are men whose fathers and grandfathers have worked in the yards before them. When vou walk, through one of the huge sheds, reverberating to the sing-song noise of anvils, you sense the feeling of pride with which the men do their work. On the walls someone had scribbled in chalk: "Go To It." It seemed an unnecessary encouragement, for everyone was hard at the job; steel plates swung through the air; men were drilling, welding, hammering. Mathematical Skill I had not realised that so much of the work was done by hand. The most delicate job was the marking of the holes in the steel plates, which are joined together like a patchwork quilt and form the body of the ship. This work calls for such mathematical accuracy that platers are not eligible until they nave served a fiveyear apprenticeship. In spite of the precision required, the shipyards have managed to double ahd treble their output; in this particular yard the 1500 men employed produce seven merchant vessels a year—an average of a ship every seven weeks. The foreman, a big, brawny man who had worked in the yard for nearly 40 years, said that if we spent the day there we could see the ship go up in front of our eyes—well, almost He said the only drawback: about turning them out so fast was that now there was no time to celebrate the launching. Escapes to England Not all the ships we saw on our trip along the river had been built on the Clyde. We passed Dutch, French and Belgian ships. Some had been seized in British ports but many had escaped to British territorial waters on their own initiative and had dramatic stories to telL Each bore the markings of its own, nationality. Although the Clydeside has been a frequent target for German bombers, I saw little damage. At one place the stones along the bank were [crumbling away. The police officer explained they had been broken up by fire when a whisky factory was hit and the burning liquid poured into the river. He said the blaze made Heaven as rosy as it should have made home, adding regretfully, but philosophically: "If it had to burn, it burned as handsome as you would have expected."