SHIP REPAIRS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 106, 1 November 1943, Page 3

SHIP REPAIRS

DUTCH INGENUITY*

Among those who were ordered by the Netherlands Indies Government to leave Java immediately prior to the Japanese occupation was a party ox naval shipwrights who, before leaving, had destroyed the nayal base at Sourabaya. After being harassed by enemy aircraft and dodging Japanese naval units these men eventually reached South Africa. Tnere they found work of a different kind. Ships were literally queueing up for repair in Cape Town. At that time a large proportion of military supplies for the. Middle East had to be sent around the Grfs, and many raiders were prowling in the waters of the South Atlantic arid the Indian Ocean. One fairly large ship.which was urgently required by the British could not be repaired, as its chances of getting dry-dock facilities were remote. Then the naval architect in charge of the Dutch shipwrights evolved a novel method which would enable his men to effect the necessary repairs without the help of a dry dock. The fact that the ship had been confiscated from the Germans in Netherlands Indian waters at the time of the German invasion of Holland perhaps stimulated hig brain to uausual effort and the possibility of repairing this German vessel for service, m the Allied cause made the job all the more interesting. Two hundred and fifty Dutch shipwrights were put to construct a pontoon shaped to fit the underside of the vessel. The watertight tanks of the pontoon were then •flooded to enable it to be pushed under the ship. This done, the tanks were blown and the water emptied from the bottom of the pontoon, thus lifting the forepart of the ship and leaving a dry chamber between the floor of the pontoon and the bottom of the ship. The vessel had struck a mine on the high seas and the damage consisted of a buckled keel and a huge hole in the side, with extensive damage for 75 feet from the bow. • With the forepart of the ship high and dry inside the pontoon a sectional dry dock had, in fact, been provided. The whole forepart of the ship was rebuilt and this one-time German vessel is now carrying military supplies for use against the German armies in Italy. Today some of these Dutch shipwrights are in Madagascar salvaging ships sunk in the harbour of Diego Suarez and repairing others, whilst those who remained in Cape Town are applying the wet "dry"-dock system to other vessels and reducing the number of ships awaiting their turn to be repaired and made ready for service in the Allied cause. ,