LIBERTY SHIPS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25174, 15 March 1943, Page 2

LIBERTY SHIPS

SUPPLYING NEW ZEALAND MASS PRODUCTION SYSTEM Captain M. J. Bulger, the representative in New Zealand of the United States War Shipping Administration, is at present paying a visit to Dunedin, and in an interview with a Daily Times reporter he gave some interesting information regarding the building of the Liberty steamers. Captain Bulger has control of all United States merchant vessels coming to New Zealand, bringing lend-lease cargoes and army and navy equipment. These vessels, he said, were mostly of the Liberty type, which, at the present time, were being built in about 12 shipbuilding yqrds in the United States. Mr Henry Kaiser was the most prominent person in this shipbuilding campaign, and he had yards at Columbia River, San Francisco, and Richmond. The remarkable’thing about Mr Kaiser’s activity in shipbuilding was that he had never built a ship before the outbreak of war. He was an engineer, and he played a prominent part in the building df the great Coulee dam. The Liberty ships, Captain Bulger continued, were built on the mass production system. One yard would be building one part, another yard another part, and so on, and then these prefabricated parts were put together. These ships were, in effect, standardised. They were 441 feet in length, with a beam of 57 feet, and were of about 7100 tons. Their cargo capacity was 10,000 tons, and they had a speed of 11 knots. The standardisation of ships also had another convenient result, in that the crew of one was familiar with the lay-out of all the others. Captain Bulger said that the new methods of mass-building ships had revolutionsed the shipping position. The time required from the laying down of the keel of a Liberty ship until she was ready to go into commission was 47 to 50 days. They were purely cargo vessels. He added that those serving New Zealand had so far been wonderfully free of any mishaps through enemy action. Captain Bulger, who came to Dunedin to investigate the docking facilities at Port Chalmers, left on his return to Wellington by last night’s express.