Death-Traps on German Liners 



The harrowing task of investigating an interned German liner with the 

 possibility of setting off a bomb or plunging into a pitfall at every turn 



A corner flange on one of the circulat- 

 ing pumps and another on a steam chest 

 were broken off with a sledge hammer 



tomless chasm, and that, if you value your 

 life, you must not touch a thing — wood, met- 

 al, or cloth — without first investigating it. 

 How would you like to explore such a 

 ship with only a flashlight to guide you 

 through the abysmal blackness, and with 

 no means of communicating with friends on 

 the top deck once you start on your 

 perilous journey? This was the task 

 assigned to a certain engineer in New York 

 shortly after the Government seized the 

 interned German ships in this country. It 

 was a task fraught with the greatest danger, 

 requiring an extraordinary degree of caution 

 and patience, and calling for a rare display 

 of courage. But so fearless was this young 

 engineer and so successful 

 Holes drilled ready was he in his undertaking 

 to Knock out piece that thirty-six hours 



after the ship in ques- 

 tion reached the Navy 

 Yard, the main boilers 

 were generating steam. 

 Among the 

 many interesting 

 things revealed by 

 the intrepid in- 

 Cylinder walls were vestigator^ were 



ruined by drilling holes the location of 



and knocking out the missing parts of 



portion within the holes 



THINK of a great deserted 

 ship, five hundred and 

 forty-five feet long, seven- 

 ty feet wide and over fifty feet 

 deep — as black and forbidding 

 as a Siberian copper mine, with 

 not a ray of light from the up- 

 permost deckhouse to the cav- 

 erns of the lowest holds, in the 

 damp and slimy bilges, or in 

 the rooms filled with engines, 

 pumps, dynamos, pipes and 

 valves without number. 



Think of exploring it, single- 

 handed, with the warning fresh 

 in your ears that it is full of pit- 

 falls, bombs and death-traps; 

 that every door you touch will 

 set off an explosive which will 

 blow you into eternity; that 

 every ladder you step on will 

 send you sprawling down a bot- 



The steel wedge was driven 

 in the cylinder head to break 

 the piston and the stuffing 

 box at one stroke. The 

 engine was cranked over 

 to cause the damage 



230 



On one of the main en- 

 gines a jackscrew was 

 placed in the low pressure 

 slide-valve chamber and a 

 portion of the cover was 

 broken out as shown above 



