BAD SHIPBUILDING

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 19, 22 January 1921, Page 7

BAD SHIPBUILDING

AMERICAN BOARD DEFRAUDED

ASTOUNDING REVELATIONS.

According to the extraordinary story related by Mr. Thomas Purtell, formerly hul! inspector of the U.S. Shipping Board, to the Congressional Committee on Shipping Board Operations, many American Government vessels have been construpted in such an amateurish way, and had. parts j'qined together with such rotten rivets, that it is a marvel they had not brqken up before this, writes the New York correspondent of the London Daily Tejegraph. Mr. Purtell, who served three years as an apprentice before he became an expert rivetter, told the investigating committee that he found the work on some vessels. so defective that he could "push the % rivets from their plates with his fingers," and although he reported this condition to his superiors nothing was done. Filially, in desperation, he sent a liox of defective rivets to President Wilson, and soon afterwards he was dismissed from the sprvice. "They gave me just time enough to get my clothes and get out of the yard," Purtell said with a grin.Mr. Purte.lT wrote another letter, to the President sttating the circumstances of his case and explaining tho kind of work that was being put into Government vessels, and he was later re-instated as inepectot and had his old pay restored. Witness told, in picturesque language, how men were employed on the Ir;ohnical task'of riveting after three weeks' instruction, with the i-esult that most pf them k^ew no 'more, about riveting "than a pig knows about playing the Jew's harp." The vessels these men turned. out, Mr.. Purtell declared, were recognised to be sq unsafe that no worker could have been persuaded to sleep on one unless it were tied'to a pier, arid "even tnoi ha would sleep.with one eye open." When he resumed wqrk,;Purtell says, hd found theworkmen "still getting away with murder," camouflaging rivets with putty and red lead, and because ho refused) to put his "0.1£."' on hulls which might fall to pieces in mid-ocean, he was again discharged for insubordination, and has since found it impossible to secure employment at his o.ld trade. ' '-*'

Captain Chambliss, another witness, told the-^story of how he lost his command because he refused to become a party to a plan to defraud the Shipping Board of £20,000, which was being practised by unscrupulous agents_ in South American; ports. Chambliss said that his chief, engineer on the Lake Elkvvoofl had never been to sea pofore, and the second officer did. not have an ocean-going license. On one .voyage from Barbados to. Rio de, Janeiro the propellor blades began to drop 1 off on an average of one per day, and finally Rio was made with one blade left. The American Consul at Rio kept the vessel in dry dock for forty-nine days, coal was sold from' her bunkers, tho entiro propellor shaft was taken out, and much valuable machinery condemned to the scrap-heap in ;ordcr that the grafters might secure ,commissiohs. for new 'eup-' plies. ■' .' ' ;"s