UNWANTED MEN-O’-WAR

Otago Witness, Issue 3556, 9 May 1922, Page 27

UNWANTED MEN-O’-WAR

DREADNOUGHTS TO TIN Ca.vS. SHIPBREAKING INDUSTRY. Converting Dreadnoug&ts into tip cans is the modprn equivalent of beating swords into ploughshares. For some time past this strange transmutation has been going on busily in Great Britain. It consists in breaking up our unrequired warships and sending the “scrap" obtained from them into South Wales, where it. is turned into, the “black plates" from which, after they ‘have been “tinned," cans of all kinds are made. Shipbreaking, like shipbuilding, is a business of itself. Firms who engage in it have to be specially equipped for the work if they intend to do it extensively, and they must “know their market.” Before the war, when the Admiralty wished to dispose of a ship, they used to put it up to auction. Prices varied, but a vessel that cost nearly a million to build -would pro babl.y be “knocked down" for about £20,000. At the present time the market for unwanted warships is overstocked, and as a consequence the Admiralty is selling them at “sacrifice” prices. As a business “deal” the Dreadnought is less attractive to the ship-breaker than was the old three-decker. Copper bolts and sheathing from the latter always yielded a substantial profit, while her timbers, whether oak or teak, could be “made up" into garden seats and a variety of o’her things. One old three-decker- has been known to realise quite a comfortable little fortune for the lucky speculator who boitght her. NEED OF SKILLED LABOUR. Reducing a warship tr “scrap” has to Ve done mainly by skilled labour. By means of powerful acetylene burners the vessel is “sliced up” into squares measuring about five feet Jpy two and a-hn!f feet—these being the right size for “feeding” into the blast furnace* in which the vessel is finally melted down. It is a wonderful sight to watch men “cutting up” an old battleship, for the acetylene flame carves through her armour plating almost as easily as a hot knife goes through butter. After a ship has been reduced to fragments her remains are sorted over carefully, the more valuable metals being placed apart from the common steel “scrap.” The latter is mostly bought by the South Wales metal merchants at prices which are determined by current market quotations. “Scrap” of tins kind has lately been sold for £2 10s per ton. But. in every warship there is a certain amount of costly material, which fetches big figures. For example, cast steel is worth twice as much as ordinary steel, while brass, gun-metal, manganese bronze, and aluminium will bring lOd per lb. *