TYPIST’S ERROR.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XIX, Issue 2050, 2 December 1924, Page 2

TYPIST’S ERROR.

WHEN SIXTY TONS OF PAINT WENT WEST. A good story reaches us from a shipbuilding centre in England. It concerns a slight error on the part of the typist who was writing out the official oicler for a, consignment of paint to finish off an ocean liner built for a foreign firm of shipowners. Instead of ordering black paint, she wrote the word “mauve” as clear as crystal—pijobably lost in dreams of the latest frock she was to try on that evening. The paint people, knowing the ship was for a foreign line, dismissed the curious choice of colour as “just another foible of them blooming dagoes; wonder they don’t want her done in orange, shot witli rainbow effects.” The mistake was only discovered when the unromantic foieman painter opened the first keg of the precious /liquid. “If the consignment had been tor painting a hoaise, it would have been bad enough, btot,” continues our correspondent, “when I was last in the Beardmore shipyard on Clydeside - Scottish birthplace of many a. famous ocean liner—l was shown_ the vaiious stages in finishing off a giant Cunarder; I related this incident t<* the Beardmore people, and they told me that such a vessel requires over sixty tons of paint inside and out.” Sixty tons! Pity the poor typist.