A SHIPYARD STORY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11687, 2 May 1916, Page 7

A SHIPYARD STORY.

SCOOTS IN THE MAKING. GREYHOUNDS OF THE NORTH SEA. Lank, grey, narrow of beam and shallow of draught, with tlie speed of an express train and the tooth of a wild cat, she cuts through the greasy waves of tho Channel, a fighter of tho scout class. Her admiral prizes her swiftness and fighting merit; 110 mere destroyer can take her measure and drive her from her task, no light cruiser dare meddlo overmuch with her. She is proudly acclaimed tho eyo of his fleet, but tho fioet knows tha.t on occasion there is "strike" as well as " sight 1 ' in her design. She will not call for help against submarine or lighter craft. To the men who drive her across tho heaving waters tho scout is great—but what is she to tho men who have built her? To soma of us not much' —in a way. The riveter who carried his furnace and pneumatic hammer to evory plate in her shell is short of memory and not enthusiastic. To him she is, simply the monotony of so many bolts of a certain gauge—bolts driven through so many holes drilled in her plates and, still red-hot, beaten and clinched home. To tho gangs in the armour shops she is still less of an individual; her identity is unrecognisabte in a mere order for hundreds of plates of this size and that, of' this thickness or tho other, bent^ to thjs curve or that—sho is not a ship at all, hut a pile of assorted ironmongery. Nor are the guns of our scout individual in their production. They are merely tested tubes of the lighter order, and not the historic 15inch guns every shaving or touch of which is made with bated breath. Scores and scores of these perfect little weapons are turned out in the shopstubes, breechworks, mountings, sights—in bulk, and' no man knows whether the latest 4.7 or 7.5 from his hands will go commission as the minor battery of or a - s the main fighting weapon of a scout or of an auxiliary cruiser. DEVELOPING INDIVIDUALITY. The imagination of our armour builders or gun constructors goes not with such slight handiwork to any great Actent. They do not see tho scout develop in a flurry of steam and rancid, smoko, amid tho thunder of hammers and the screams of winches, becoming a ship under their hands, as we do. So it is to the gangs and squads who assemble the prepared pieces into the shape of a warship that there comes the wonder of her individuality. On tho stocks the workmen will gossip as to which of tho sister ships will be the greatest power or ;failuro. The drawing office makes its duplicates of the master design, tho pattern-maker knows that there is_no variation in his models for the castings, the men at tho plate-mill roll out shsot after sheet of armour aliko in weight and size, lath© and gauge conspiro to make every part of tho machinery exactly alike, so' that a class of sister ships should act alike, steam aliko, shoot alike, for never a hair's breadth of difference has been pormitted. Which is but right and' leading to the greater efficiency of tho squadron and tho fleet. Yet somehow a spirit of independence, of emulation, of indifference enters each hull; at the launching, one shell sits the water mora jauntily, more lumpily than the others. The engines have all been made aliko, but bolted into place on the bed-plates 0113 sot shows a knot more or less speed than the others. Why? Is it a tributo to the brains and hands of tho workers, to tho superiority of muscles and grains to tho msro inert masses of steel? • The mystery continues upward from her shell, her engines, to her armament. Two tubes, alike to the last shade of a millimetre, still shoot differently. And when she's afloat, our men can toll tho one from the other by the way she slips through the water, by her relish for a lively quarter sea. Our crows of artificers who go out on private trials bring back tho working repute of the now scout, a repute which has never yet belied that which sho has been building up in the yard front the day her keel-plat© was laid. STRENUOUS WORK. In those days of war and the busy production of arms and shipping we have less leisure to observe tho manners of the craft we build, nor is it desirable that one should even refer in general terms to present activities. In every department tho most- strenuous efforts are being made, records are being surpassed, not only of speed in builcfing, but in efficiency in every direction. The scouts are over a more dangerous type of deep-sea craft., reaching oiit to tho destroyers for speed and to the light cruisers for fighting power, rising in cost and range with overy type of ship. ' We of the shipyards do not forget tho craft on which wo have laboured, although it is fate that they are rarely, seen after, with all tests successfully completed, they raco out. of the Channel to the horizon and away. We know their mishaps, the boilertnbes which burst, the propellers which foul in some sunken wreckage, and are stripped of blades, the steering gear which goes wrong and sends the craft aground in some devious channel, the collisions on night manoeuvres or in fog, and the -wreck in storm. They are our handiwork, and wo grieve at their distresses. They are our pride, and wo rejoice when news sifts through a- certain liveliness in the North Sea," and with bated breath we whisper back and forward the gossip of tne Fleet which names this scout and that, as being distinguishecT in the fight. Then it seems that the dread monotony of tolling out plates,-of beating in rivets, of drudgery in guns!)op an'd foundry, is not, all for naught.. Wo take new pleasure in tho heavy task, in the greyhound, which is competing at her berth in the upper yard. We discuss her progress from afai, and noto 011 the wet winter evening that the searchlight gang are at work with their swivels and lenses, sending out the electric ray this way and that, narrowing it now to a mere slit, and not presenting us, as we trudge from the vard, with a full orb of brilliance. To-morrow sho will cast off her mooring hawsers, bo towed into the outer basin, thou away to test hor engines on tho rough firth before going into full commission agsiinst the hurricanes' of the. Atlantic, the snow-filled pales of the North Sea.—(W. T. Palmer in the " Daily Express. M ) j