340 BANQUET. 



very badly at that time. This discovery wras reported by a Customs House man. I went to 

 the Collector of Customs and asked him to put a stop on the shipment of these tools. He 

 said he could not do it — that they were going to neutrals, shipped by neutrals and he could 

 not touch them. I said : — "The United States is at war, and you have no right to let these 

 things go out of the United States unless you are absolutely sure that they are not going to 

 Germany, and you do not know that to be the case." He said : — "I will have to make you 

 responsible for it." I replied: — "My second name is responsibility." He telegraphed to 

 Washington and had the shipment of the tools stopped. There is something about red tape 

 which perhaps you do not know. You can work it backward. After we put a stop on the 

 shipment, it took us three months to find out how to get it off so that we could use the 

 tools. At the time that we opened the consignment of tools we found that they were all 

 destined for Germany. That was a side issue. 



Another one was in connection with the Leviathan, when the question of cleaning her 

 bottom came up. I knew she had been lying there in the North River for three years or 

 more, and I expected that her speed could not be greater than 17 knots. We did not think 

 that was enough. I called up the manager of the Chapman Merrit Wrecking Company, 

 and said : — "Have you divers who can clean the bottom of the Leviathan where she lies ?" 

 We talked about the great necessity of getting the ship. I aroused his . enthusiasm, and 

 Monday morning he got six divers on the work. It took them six weeks to do the work, 

 and at the end of that time we inspected her, found she was clean, and she went to sea three 

 months later, made 33.5 knots, went abroad, and when she was put in the dock she was as 

 clean as a whistle. (Applause.) I had learned something about the North River. I had 

 learned of a ship that had left dry dock for two months, and at the end of that time she 

 had a complete outer layer of barnacles. We put her in the dock. When the scrapers were 

 put on, we found the first coating was a coating of slime, and the barnacles adhered to that ; 

 the paint was not attacked, and when we took off the barnacles the paint was just as good 

 as new. Many people thought I was ruining the bottom of the Leviathan, without a chance 

 to paint her, but I happened to know that about the North River. My judgment proved 

 to be correct, as her paint was in good condition when she went to Europe. 



I want to tell you a little more about hdw much further we have gone in welding since 

 that time. The latest exhibition of welding of any magnitude that I know anything about 

 was in the case of the Oklahoma. She came to Brest last summer to bring the President 

 back. The President made several false starts and in one of these false starts the Okla- 

 homa warmed her engines up, got a slug of water in the high-pressure cylinder, and blew 

 the high-pressure cylinder head off. Three-quarters of the flange of that cast-iron cylinder 

 head was cracked, and two feet of the circumference broken square out with the strength- 

 ening ribs, and every strengthening rib in the head was cracked. The head weighed 3,300 

 pounds and my casting capacity on the Bridgeport was 3,000 pounds, so we were up against 

 it. Two alternatives confronted us — one was to construct a pattern to make a new casting. 



