THE AMERICAN WOOD SHIP FLEET SOLD.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18754, 6 January 1923, Page 10

THE AMERICAN WOOD SHIP FLEET SOLD.

A V'HITE ELEPHANT DISPOSED OF. Uncle Sam at last has his fleet of warbuilt wooden ships off his hands. At a private auction sale they have been bought by a San Francisco lawyer, acting_ for a syndicate, for 750,000 dollars. As it cost close to 700,000 to build each of these’ vessels, the fleet, as the Washington correspondent of the Now York Times notes, has been sold for virtually the cost cf one ship. On these 226 ships the Government will net a little more than 3.313 dollars each, practically twice what would have been made if they had been disposed of last year as contemplated. The writer in The Times comments: These wooden ships have long been a white elephant on the hands of the Federal Government. While members of the Shipping Board recognise that they are disposing of the wooden fleet for a very low figure, they are convinced, they say, that this is the best deal that could have been made in the interest of the Government, Present and former Shipping Boards uad’ advertised three times before the sale of the vessels and received only one prior bid for the sale of the entire fleet—that of the Ship Construction- and Trading Company of New York, on July 30, 1921. For some time it cost the Government nearly 50,000 dollars a month to take care of the ships, and two tugs in the James River (where 211 ships have been laid up) have been used in pumping water from them to keep units of the fleet from sinking. It also cost the Government something to employ a force of men on board the ships to keep them from sinking. When asked what would be done with the wooden fleet the attorney for the purchaser told a New York correspondent : The Government specifies that we must dismantle them as steamships. Part of the 266 ships, if not all of them, will be brought to this coast for dismantling, probably to San Francisco, which is the logical place. Members of the syndicate will use some o! the ships in their trade on this coast. Wo may sell others as. barges, while some may not be useful for anything but junk.