A Torpedo-Proof Ship With Six Hulls 



It is to solve the food problem by 

 scooping up the fish from the sea 



THE one great aim of Germany is to 

 cut off America from her Allies, pre- 

 venting our giving them military 

 assistance and our supplying them with 

 food. With his radically new inventions, 

 Nels A. Ly- 

 beck, of New 

 York, a sea- 

 man of many 

 years' experi- 

 ence, hopes to 

 thwart Ger- 

 many in both 

 of these aims. 

 Lybeck's 

 invention of 

 a multiple- 

 hull ship util- 

 izes a sailing 

 principle 

 never before 

 used on any 

 ocean-going 

 ship. Six 

 hulls twelve 

 feet wide, 

 separated by 

 twelve feet of 

 distance, sup- 

 port the rectangular decks of the ship. 

 The hulls are slightly tunnel-shaped at the 

 bottom, and when they speed over the sea, 

 the water is packed in these tunnels, — they 

 rise upward and slide through the water. 

 This novel construction has still another 

 virtue. The largest waves cannot roll this 

 ship. The row of hulls makes the ship act 

 just like a huge flat-bottom scow, longer and 

 wider than the breadth of the largest wave. 

 The boat virtually rides on the tops of the 

 waves, rolling but slightly even in the most 

 violent seas. 



But what has this to do with submarines, 

 you ask? Just this: With a rectangular, 

 non-rolling ship it is possible to protect 

 it from submarines by means of torpedo- 

 proof shields. Where V-bow boats would 

 violently pitch when speeding on the high 

 seas, and thereby strain their nets until 

 they snapped off from their supports, this 

 ship would carry a continuous, submerged 

 steel wall on each side which would have 

 to resist only the slight traveling strains 



The scoop on the speeding torpedo-proof ship is a hun- 

 dred feet deep and one hundred and thirty feet wide 



caused by the water's friction. At bow and 

 stern, she could rig herself out with strong 

 steel gratings, and thus defy the biggest 

 enemy torpedo afloat. 



It was not long after perfecting his sub- 

 marine-proof 

 ocean freight- 

 er that Ly- 

 beck further 

 developed 

 this scheme 

 into his solu- 

 tion of the 

 food problem. 

 There are suf- 

 ficient fish 

 scattered in 

 the ocean to 

 continuously 

 and com- 

 pletely sup- 

 ply the Allies 

 with food 

 many times 

 over. Wit- 

 ness his truly 

 twentieth 

 century 

 method : 



Three searchlights are used on his mul- 

 tiple-hull ship at night to send their power- 

 ful rays ten miles ahead of the boat. As 

 the ship draws on, the ray of light becomes 

 ever narrower, so that the fish crowd 

 densely together as they swim eagerly 

 towards it. 



Then the huge wire scoop, a hundred 

 feet deep and a hundred and thirty feet 

 wide, which can be readily suspended from 

 the front of the Lybeck type of boat, 

 is dropped in the water. The ribs of this 

 scoop are made like whalebones, so that 

 water and debris can easily seep through 

 and the fish can slide up, but never down 

 and out of it! 



When the teeming crowd of fish reaches 

 the darkened scoop, this onrushing trap 

 quickly swallows it up. Once near the end 

 of the scoop, an endless-belt conveyor car- 

 ries the fish to the assorting deck. Here a 

 hundred men distribute them into cross 

 conveyors which carry each fish into its 

 respective refrigerator. 



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