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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (July 18, 1920)
TIIE SUNDAY OREGONIAX, PORTLAND, - JULY 18, 1920 Victory At Sea By Admiral William Sowden Sims uinitiiMiituiimii(ifuiinMimiHmtWMiiHtfnitifltifiiiHtftnittfttiiinmnnniitits PROTECTING THE AMERICAN TRANSPORTS t ft Jh n V 1 - - ' h?W vM'r.fl - ' - if I N -IW fLv- MEANWHILE, on the other side of the Atlantic, a great organ ization had been created under the able direction of Rear-Admiral Albert Gleaves. As soon as war was declared the work was begun of con verting Into transports those German merchant ships which had been in terned in American ports. The suc cessful completion of this work was. In itself, a great triumph for the American Navy. Of the vessels which the Germans had left in our hands. seventeen at New York, Boston, Nor- , lolk and Philadelphia, seemed to be adapted' for transport purposes, but the Germans had not intended that we ehould make any such ule of them. Conditions IndeHcribably Bad. The condition of these ships, after their German custodians had left, was 6omething Indescribable; they re flected great discredit upon German seamanship, for it would have been impossible for any people which really loved ships to permit them to deteriorate as had these vessels and to become such cesspools of filth. For three years the Germans had evident ly made no attempt to clean them; the sanitary conditions were so bad that our workmen could not sleep on board, but had to have sleeping quar ters near the docks; they spent weeks scrubbing, scraping, and disinfecting, in a finally successful effort to make the ships suitable habitations for hu man beings. Not only had the Ger mans permitted such liners as the Vaterland and the Kronprinzessin Cecilie to ge neglected, but, on their departure, they had attempted to in jure them in all conceivable ways. The cylinders had been broken, en gines had been smashed, vital parts of th machinery had been removed and thrown into the sea, ground. glass had been placed in the oil cups, gunpow der had been placed in the coal evi dently in the hope of causing ex plosions when the vessels were at ea and other damage of a more subtle nature had been done, it evi dently being the expectation that the chips would break down when on the ocean and beyond the possibility of repair. ' Although our navy yards had no copies of the plans of these vessels or their machinery the Ger mans having destroyed them all and although the missing parts were of peculiar German design, they succeed ed, in an incredibly short time, in making them even better and speedier vessels than they had iver been be fore. Renaming; the Boats. The national sense of humor did not tail the transport service when it came to rechristening these ships; the Prinzess Irene became the Pocahon tas; the Rhein, the Susquehanna; and there was also an ironic justice in the ract that the Vaterland. which had been built by the Germans partly for the purpose of transporting troops in war. actually fulfilled this mission, though not. quite in the way which ine oermans had anticipated. We called in all available vessels from the Atlantic and Pacific coast and the Great Lakes; England stripped her trade routes to Squth America. Australia and the East, and France and Italy also made their contribu tions. or all the American troops sent to France from the beginning of the war. the United States provided transports lor 46.25 per cent.. Great Britain for 51.25. the remainder being proviaea oy trance and Italy. Of those sent between March, 1918, and the armistice, American vessels car ried 42.15 per cent.. Britain 55.40 per cent. (These figures are taken from the annual report of the secretary .of secretary .o 7.) ; lent In th the navy for 1919. page 207 Tet there was one elem aft transportation of trouya which r?v1l . 1 - - '--"-vv:ii:;,rr; was even more fundamental than those which I have named. The basis of all our naval operations were the dreadnaughts and the battle cruisers of the grand -fleet. It was this ag gregation, as I have already . indi cated, which made possible the oper ation of all the surface ships that de stroyed the effectiveness of the sub marines. Had the- grand fleet sud denly disappeared beneath the waves, all these offensive craft would have been driven from the seas, the allies' sea lines of communication would have been cut. and the war would have ended in Germany's favor. From the time the transportation of tfoops began the United States had a squad ron of five dreadnaught battleships constantly with the grand fleet. The following vessels performed this im portant duty: The New York, Captain C. F. Hughes, afterward Captain E. Ii Beach; the Wyoming, Captain H. A. Wiley, afterward Captain H. H. Christy; the Florida, Captain Thomas LIBERTY BELL, MOST REVERED OF AMERICAN RELICS, MAY YET RING AS OF YORE Modern Electrical Engineers Interested in Proposal to Close Great Crack Disease, SI ow Disintegration. SILENCED for more than three quarters of a century since It last tolled at the funeral of John Marshall, chief justice of the United States, in July, 1835; its once vibrant voice completely hushed save for a dull and feeble sound transmitted across the continent by telephone and transcribed by phonograph several years ago when it was gingerly tap ped by city officials, the Liberty bell, most revered of American relics, may yet speak again as it did in the days of its youth. Modern science would heal completely the treacherous break that split it wide from rim well up to crown, and make it ring again as joyously as it did at the birth of the young republic when it was made to "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof." Electrical engineers interested in the proposition of welding would piece the sacred old bell together. Electricity, the magic power of mod ern industrialism, would be the me dium applied not alone to close the breach in the bell, but to cure it of ts chronic metallurgical disease slow disintegration by applying the latest developments in the therapeu tics of mineral matters. The project was discussed at a re cent meeting of the American Weld ing society. It remains for the guar dians of ' the bell and the American people, to whom it belongs, to say. whether the invalid bell with its sup posedly fatal wound shall be sum moned into the electric clinic or left to its' fate. It is D. H. Wilson, the New York engineer, who proposes the 'surgical operation. You don't recall Wilson? He is the man who fitted up anew the damaged merchant marine. Re member when the United States threw down the gauntlet to Germany in April three years ago, how the Hun retaliated by putting out of commis sion nearly every German merchant liner tied up at American wharves. Axes were swung, explosives were used and intricate machinery with which these ships were propelled was "bashed in," In the belief that the Yanks never would be able to repair these ships in time to turn them against the fatherland. Looking over the "wrecks." some engineers said it would take a year or mora to repair i i 1 : Washington, afterward Captain M. M. Taylor: the Delaware, Captain A, H. Scales: the Arkansas, Captain W. H G. Bulliard, afterward Captain L. R. de Steiguer, and the Texas, Captain Victor Blue. These vessels gave this great force "an unquestioned prepon derance, and made It practically cer tain that Germany would not attempt another general sea battle. Under Rear-Admiral Hugh Rodman. the American squadron performed excel lent service and made the most favor able impression upon the chiefs of the allied navies. But these were not the only large battleships which the United States sent to European waters. Despite all the precautions which I have described, there was still one danger which constantly confronted American troop transports. By June and July, 1918. our troops were cross ing the Atlantic in enormous num bers, about 300,000 a month, and were accomplishing most decisive results those ships and put them back in commission. New parts would have to be installed. Then along came Wilson with his electric welding needle. It is a matter of history, of course, that in from three to four months every single German liner was ready to put to sea again. Even while Yankee troops j were wiping out the St. Mihiel salient and sweeping clean the Argonne, those German ships, led by the giant Vaterland, were pouring American men and munitions into England, Bel gium and France. Not only did Wil son and his crew weld the Vaterland and her sisters as good as new, but he made them so fleet that our "gobs" were able to get three knots better speed out of them than the Germans ever had made! This man "'ilson, along with 'Wake-em-up" Dudley of the Chester Shipbuilding Co.; B. B. Chichester, the Virginia who developed the science of electric welding under water, and other authorities on welding say the grand old Liberty Bell can be re deemed; that it may have "health glands" transferred to Its body that will do for it what the "Fountain of Florida" was supposed to do for de crepit Ponce de Leon. Transfusion would be the process involved, just as in the hospital an anemic is wooed back to life and color again by the injection of pure fresh blood in his veins, only in this case it would be a metal transfusion. They would proceed In this fashion: Take first a grain of metal from the crevice of the bell. Have it analyzed by a board of expert metal lurgists. Reproduce in the labora tories of the alchemist the identical metal of which the Liberty Bell is composed. When you have the proper alloy you are ready to bring on the electric needle. Now for the process of 'welding. Fashion the new metal to be applied into a wire or needle of the welding apparatus Measure the resistance of the bell and the resistance of the wire after having estimated the amount of steel sufficient to fill up the crack. Now to fill in-the cracU. One elec tric contact is made on the bell and the other on the needle that is com posed of the same metal substance as upon the battlefield. A successful at tack upon a convoy, involving the sinking of one or more transports, would have nad no important effect upon the war, but it would probably have improved German morale and possibly have Injured that of the Americans. There was practically only one way in which such ap attack could be made; one or more German battle cruisers might slip out to sea and assail one of our troop convoys. In order to prepare for such a possibi lity, the department sent three of our most powerful dreadnaughts to Bere haven, Ireland the Nevada. Captain A. T. Long, afterward Captain W. C. Cole; the Oklahoma, Captain M. L. Bristol, afterward Captain C. B. Mc Vay; and the Utah, Captain F. B. Bassett, the whole division under the command of Rear-Admiral Thomas .S Rodgers. Berehaven is located in Bantry bay, on the extreme south western coast. For several months and "Cure" It of Metallurgical the bell itself. Electricity leaps be tween the two points. It describes an arc. since electricity travels in a curved rather than a straight line. Now the process of vaporization Is in full blaze. The electric needle i3 con suming itself and depositing its own particles within the orifice of the split bell. Eighty per cent of the applied power is being consumed on the wire side of the arc. Five per cent of the current is in the arc itself, a burning glare of light that makes the operator shield his eyes behind heavily smoked goggles. Ten per cent of the power is consumed on the negative pole for the purpose of heat ing the plate which receives the de posit. You simply touch the electric needle to one on the other side of the crack, withdraw it a fraction of an Inch and then repeat the process over and over. Your electric needle, or welding wire, is giving its own life, transferring its very self through the medium of the electric current, to fill out the crevice in the Liberty Bell. Particle by particle, layer on layer, the process continues until the open ing is closed. The Liberty Bell ts mended just as the surgeon takes a piece of bone from the shin and grafts it on the face to make a new nose bone for bone and, in this case, metal' for metal. Not only will It ring, say the weld ers, but it. will have again the same vibrant tone that it had when It was first hung up In the steeple of the State House In Philadelphia in the summer of 1753. The old bell rang first to call the members of the as sembly; it rang when town meetings were held in the State House yard; it tolled dismally when the stamp act went into effect; it electrified the people when the tea ship Polly was sent home with Its cargo untouched: it saluted the patriots from Boston when they sojourned with the patriots of Philadelphia; It sounded in dirge fashion when Boston was occupied by the redcoats under Gage; it pealed joyously when the news of Lexington and Concord reached the Quaker City, and, finally. It clanged forth as spokesman announcing the birth of the new republic and the consumma tion of the Declaration of Independ ence. For many years altar th our dreadnaughts lay here, ready to start to sea and give battle, momen tarily awaiting the ne-vs that a Ger man raider had escaped. But the ex pected did not happen. The mere fact that this powerful squadron was ready for the emergency is perhaps the reason why the Germans never attempted, the adventure. What the Map Showed. A reference to the map which ac companies this article will help the reader to understand why our trans ports were able to carry American troops to France so successfully that not a single in-going ship was ever struck by a torpedo. This diagram makes it evident that there were two areas of the Atlantic through which American shipping could reach its European destination. The line of division wa.s about the 49th parallel of latitude, the French city of Brest representing its most familiar land mark. From this point southward extending as far as the 15th parallel. revolution it rang out on national holidays, in welcoming illustrious! visitors, in mourning the deaths of beloved American patriots. It was tolling on the day when the body of Chief Justice Marshall was being car ried in a public funeral procession, and after that day it never tolled again. Shall the Liberty bell ring again? The electric welders would invoke now the magic power that Benjamin Franklin snatched from the clouds with a silken cord and key in the days when the Liberty bell shown re fulgent in the full glory of its mission and make that same beloved relic function anew as it did in the days of youth; a renaissance of the good old- fashioned American brand of liberty that was good enough in the anti bolshevistic days, when pure democ racy leaped to the front rank of civilization. It is asserted by the welders that electricity will also cure the famous bell of its chronic disease. The bell's doctor, Alexander E. Outerbridge Jr., who holds the chair of metallurgy at Franklin Institute bnu held thai lh bell suffers from n form n f rlis- I temper. It is to be guarded carefully lest It go all to pieces. The electrical engineers now pre scribe baths for the bell electrical baths. Heat it electrically and then allow it to cool slowly. This will elim inate the "fatigue" of the metal. The heat treatment is recommended re gardless of the proposed transfusion. The heat, it Is reasoned, would pre serve the bell by relieving the stress between the metal particles caused by vibration. Constant vibration wears against the relic, particularly when it, is opened to visitors, as in the recent case when the Spanish novelist, Vlncente Blasco Ibanez, clasped and kissed it. As for the electric welding of the fissure, another woman may take ber place in history beside Betsy Ross and Barbara Frletchie. Women are easily adapted to electric welding. They have the deftness of touch nec essary to perfect welding. During the war there was a woman in the Hog Island ship yard who excelled all others as an electric welder. In Baltimore, in the Mont Clair shops of the ' Baltimore & Ohio railroad, there is a woman who earns better than $3600 a year welding locomotive fireboxes. A girl who handled high explosives and phosphorus at the Frankford Arsenal found herself out of a job on armistice day, but speed ily "joined up" again with an electric Cjompany in Erie, where she today draws large wages patching steam tract ura, automobile parts, anvils and which corresponds to the location of the city or Bordeaux, is a great stretch of ocean, about 200 miles wide. It includes the larger part of the Bay of Biscay, which forms that huge indentation with which our school geographies have made us Americans so familiar, and which has always enjoyed a particular fame for its storms, the dangers of its coast, and the sturdy and Independent char acter of the people on its shores. The other distinct area to which the map calls attention extends norther ly from the 49th parallel to the 52ln; It comprises the English channel, and includes both the French channel ports, the British ports, the southern coast of Ireland, and the entrance to the Irish sea. The width of this second section is very nearly the same as that of the one to the south, or about 1!00 miles. , I have thus far had little to say of the Bay of Biscay section because, until 191S. there was comparatively little activity In that part of the other metal products that have met with accidents. These welding engineers tell us that the world will soon turn to electric welding for virtually all metal .con struction work. In labor saving alone, they point out, the welding process holds the advantage. One operator only is needed in welding. In riveting ship plates together it takes four men to rivet one plate. One man is the riveter, another the holder on, the third the passer-up and the fourth the heater boy, who supplies the red-hot bolts. In this way. it is said, there is a net saving of from 18 to 25 l-erj cent in the cost of ship construction. But. of equal advantage, is the saving in the weight of the ehip and its in creased cargo-carrying capacity. The hull is electric welded throughout, i and therefore wholly without rivets I in us construction. Ail plates are auuLkcu l i , w n l i, Ottawa nt..,Al . : angles, and then welded with a joint 95 to 100 per cent as strong as the abutting steel members. Dudley of the Chester shipyard, says that, due to the elimination of loose, leaky joints, elimination of air and water pockets in riveted joints. where rust may form, and substitut ing smooth for Irregular surfaces, the maintenance costs may be consider ably reduced; the exterior or wetted surface of the welded hull is smoother than the riveted hull, so the resistance to propulsion, fuel consumption and the capacity of propelling machinery will be about 2 per cent less; water tightness is easily and completely at tained even in most difficult places: owing to the saving of space and lightening the hull with the same tonnage displacement. Already they are putting automo biles, street cars, railway rolling stock, window sash, horseshoes and steel rails together with the tiny 12-ounce electric welding needle. Now they are proposing to dip down into the ocean that needle and lift up sunken ships that may be salvaged for their hidden treasure. Pretty soon we may be buijding the world of to morrow with an electrified metal pen cil that a woman may wield as neatly as the artist sways his brush to and frd over the canvas. Civil War Veteran Xow Citizen. SEATTLE. Wash. James Doyle, a I civil war veteran, recently was grant ed citizenship papers in the United States district court here. For 54 years he had voted and performed the duties of a citizen although he was born In Ireland. He believed himself a citizen because of his serv ice in the union army and his father's naturalization ocean. For every ship which sailed through this bay I suppose that there were at least 100 which came through the Irish sea and the English chan nel. Through the Bay of Biscay. Thg fact that we had, these two separate areas and that these two areas were so different in characttr is what made it possible to send our 2.00". 000 soldiers to France with out losing a s-inc:!e man. From March, 1918. to the conclusion of the war the American and British navies were engaged in two distinct transporta tion operations. The shipment of food and munitions continued in 1918 as in 1917. and on an even larger scale. With the passing of time the mechanism of these mercantile con voys increased in efficiency, and by March. 191S. the management of this great transportation system had be come almost automatic. Shipping from America came into Britten ports, it will be remembered, in two great trunk lines, one of which' ran up the English channel and the other up the Irish sea. But when the time came to brinsr over the American troops, we naturally selected the area to the south, both because it was necessary to send the troops to France and because we had here a great expanse of ocean which was relatively free of submarined. Our earliest troop shipments dis embarked at tft. Nazaire; later, when the great trans-Atlantic liners, both German and British, were pressed into service, we landed many tenB of thousands at Brest; and all the larg est French ports from Breist to Bor deaux took a share. A smaller num ber we sent to England, from which j country they were transported across the channel into France: when he demands became pressing, indoed I hardly a ship of any kind was sent to Europe without its quota of Amer ican soldiers; but. on the whole, the business of transportation in 1C18 followed simple and well-defined lines. We sent mercantile convoys in what I may call the northern "lane" and troop convoys In the southern "lane." We kept both lines of traffic for the most part dis tinct, and this simple procedure of fered to our German enemies a pretty problem. For. I must repeat, .the German navy could maintain in the open At lantic Only about eight or ten of her efficient U-boats at one time. The German admiralty thui had to an swer this difficult question: Shall we use these submarines to attack mercantile convoys or to attack troop convoys? The submarine flotilla which was actively engaged was bo small that it as aiurd to think of sending half into each lane; the Ger mans must send most of their subma rines against cargo ships or most of them against troop ships. Which should it be? Copyright. 1020. by the World's Work. The copyright of these articles in Ureat Britain id strictiy reserved by Pearson's Mafrazine. London: without their per mission no quotation may be made. Pub lished by special arrangement with tne MrClure Ne-ppuper syndicate. Another article next Sunday. Blessings of Pope Taken by Envoy to Japan. Confederation for Nipponese Na tion Ktprrnnril Through Arch binhop I'rtro KumaMoln. Third to Have Been Sent on Such Min Mion. TOKIC tro OKIO, March 24.- -Archbishop Pe- Fumasoni. who Jias just ar rived in Tokio, has conveyed the pope's blessing upon all Catholics bArn nnH ft vnrpKpl bis h i frb rnnsitl- era(ion forthe Japanes nation. He is the third envoy sent to this coun- try from the Vatican. The first was Cardinal O'Connell, of Boston and the second Archbishop Petrelli who presented to t-he em peror the pope's congratulations upon j his acces:ion to the throne. Archbishop Fumasoni will stay about three years in Japan and may remain permanently as apostolic delegate if the Japanese government extends to him the recognition ex tended by civil governments, the Vatican being willing, it is said, to reciprocate by inviting a permanent Japanese representative to the holy see. A few months ago Captain Yamamoto was sent to the pope on an official mission from the Japanese government. The archbishop comes from India where he held the post of apostolic delegate for the last few years. Re ferring to the Catholic inhabitants of the Carolines and the Mariannes islands who have been without clergy since the German missionaries were repatriated, Arshbishop Fumasoni said that these islands are now un der the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Sydney. Father and Son Kidnaped. MEXICO CITY. Rafael Cal y May or, the Zapatista rebel leader, who kidnaped the well-known planter, Ernesto Gutierrez, has now kidnaped the son of Gutierrez also. The son went to arrange for the ransom of his father. The two men are now held for ransom, which the rebel lead er fixes at 10.000 pesos. 200 hats and 100 uniforms. It Is reared that the family will not be able to raise the ransom because their property is com pletely destroyed. Vickers Launch 1920 CraTt. MONTREAL. P. Q. The first 1920 launching from the Vickers yards took place last week when the Tat jana. the third vessel built by this firm for Norwegian interests, took the water. The vessel will sail forChrls tiauia before the end of May
