Deathrate & Birthrate

Britain's 18,000,000-ton merchant marine, largest in the world, is sinking. Best unofficial estimates in Washington are that British losses were at the rate of 72,000 gross tons a week in November, more than 80,000 tons a week since, a total of about 2,500,000 tons since beginning of the war. Since England's highest hopes for her own new shipbuilding program are only 1,350,000 tons a year, less than a third the present rate of sinkings, ships stand high on the British must-have list.

Last October a British shipping mission came to the U. S. with instructions to work fast. The mission's problem was still unsolved last week. Chief difficulty: U. S. shipyards already are working to capacity, have neither ways nor men to handle additional orders.

The eight U. S. Navy shipyards are busy with U. S. naval vessels. So are many of the 23 private yards equipped to build ocean-going vessels of 300 feet or more in length. The private yards have also contracted to construct 176 merchant ships: 124 for the Maritime Commission, 52 (mostly tankers) for private firms. This is enough orders to keep their 83 ways busy more than a year, even if all the ways are used without interruption. Last week, when representatives of the industry met in Washington with Defense Commission experts and labor men, it became clear that interruptions were occurring. The cause: shortage of skilled workmen.

Building a ship is like building a house, where putting up the walls must wait laying the foundation and the roof must wait on the walls. When one job is finished, expert workmen are laid off until the same job comes along on another ship. With shipyards booming along both coasts and the Gulf, laid-off workmen (about 8,000 a month out of 160,000 now employed in the industry) have been loath to wait, frequently have moved to other yards. The purpose of the Washington conference was to stop delays.

Unlikely to get much help from overworked U. S. shipbuilders, the British have done a little better in the market for second-hand ships. Since the war began, England and Canada have bought or arranged to buy 168 old vessels totaling 627,600 tons (deadweight) from U. S. owners (including 36 vessels from World War I's laid-up fleet). Deals are under way now for 45 more, and others may follow. Since almost any seagoing vessel is adequate for use in convoys, which travel slowly, Britain is better off buying old ships at low prices than new ones at high prices.

To U. S. shipping lines, the growing scarcity values of vessels of any age has been the biggest stimulus to modernization since the Maritime Commission began its building program in 1938. When war began, the U. S. merchant marine consisted of 2,345 ocean-going vessels of 8,909,892 gross tons and was largely obsolescent. Over 7% of these old ships, which practically had been written off the books and would have been sold for scrap in a few years, now have been sold to England or Canada. At about $50 a ton, owners have received some $31 million--enough for down payments on many a modern freighter just off the ways. Latest shipping firm to take advantage of the favorable trade-in allowance on old ships is Black Diamond Line, which applied to the Maritime Commission last month to sell all eight of its freighters (41,031 tons, 18 to 22 years old) to England, got an O.K. last week on four of them.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.