LETTERS then down the side to the 'tween deck. (I was in a loaded one about 20 miles out of New York when she let go there-with the sound and the jump, we thought at first it was a torpedo, until we saw the mizzen mast move differently than the rest of the vessel!) The failures were caused, not by rigidity, but by the stresses built into the hull due to the assembly sequence of the hull sections. I recall on my first visit to the J. R. Jones yard at Panama City, seeing large (and I mean large) concrete blocks with the numbers 25, 50, 75 painted on them. They stood acros~ the crane-way from the ways heads, and upon asking, was told that the figures indicated the ton weight of each, and that they were used to help flatten the hull. So I watched, and noted that every morning each ways foreman would go under the hull and measure the rise of the (designed) flat keel ends off the blocks. When the ends got up to I Yz-1 314 inch off, those were put on the hull ends and the welding sequence reversed-forcing the ends back down to the designed position! So many of those buckets cracked that the Arthur Tickle Engineering Co. set up a "Reinforcing facility" on Pier I, Brooklyn. Every Liberty that came into New York,
when empty was sent over there to have a sheer belt of 60 pd. plate, 24 inches deep put on, the ends of each section of steel being welded together to make an endless belt, and the whole, a tight fit riveted to the hull at the top of her sheerstrake. Apparently the Corrie was taken by the Navy-and not in merchant service -which, though surprising, might account for having a Long Tom at the stern. All the merchant Liberties carried the famous, dual purpose 5/ 38 on the after house. The 5/ 51 or Long Tom was an excellent weapon, but only a "surface" gun with a very small range of elevation, while the 5/ 38, though of shorter range (and barrel), was both surface and anti-aircraft, working from - 15 ° to + 85 ° elevations. As a final bit of "nit-pick in' "-since the whole vessel design and building program of the Liberties was based on welded construction, the Corrie might have been the first welded ship out of the Jacksonville yard (another one that I put time in), but she could not have been the first of the welded Liberties. That honor, if such it be, would go to the Patrick Henry, the first Liberty to be built, launched and put into service. The
Liberties were just an American adaption of the Gibbs & Cox design for the British emergency ship program which specified welded vessels. ROBERT G. HERBERT, Jr. East Northport, New York One of a Kind To the Editor: Several weeks ago a man came in to our Brooklyn headquarters and announced to me that he had figured out how we got the name of our Membership Secretary. He wrote "Marine Lore" on a slip of paper, then crossed out the "n". He thought this was an invented name and seemed so pleased with working it out that I did not dare disillusion him. MARIE LORE Membership Secretary, NMHS
Mrs. Lore really exists, to the great reward of all who know her or work with her in her volunteer labors for the Society and for South Street Seaport Museum.-ED.
A HISTORY OF WAR AT SEA An Atlae and Chronology of Conflict at Sea &om Earlieet Timee to the Preeent By Helmut Pemsel The entire history of war at sea is described and charted in this remarkable book. The conflicts covered range from the victory of the ancient Greeks over the Persians at Salamis in 480 B.C. through nearly 2500 years of war at sea to the naval operations of the Vietnamese and lndo-Pakistani wars. Every major naval conflict in history is presented in these pages, including the campaigns of the Romans, the conquering Vikings, Lepanto, the Spanish Armada, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years War, the American Revolution, Trafalgar, the American Civil War, the Russo-Japanese War\ World Wars I and D, Korea, and many others. In A Hietory of War at Sea Helmut Pemsel has combined the merits of a visual encyclopedia with the accuracy of an authoritative chronology. This is an illuminating reference indispensable to everyone concerned 1977/240 pagee/illaetrated/$15.95 with the history of war at sea.
SW Book Order Department U.S. Naval ln•titate An-polis, Maryland 21402 Yes. Please send me _ _ copies of A History of War At Sea. I have enclosed my check or money order for $ , including $1.00 for postage and handling. (Please add 5% sales tax for delivery within the State of Maryland.)
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SEA HISTORY, FALL 1978