OPERATING PROBLEMS OF THE AMERICAN SHIPOWNER. 
By Eucene E. O’DonnNeELL, Eso., MemBEr. 
{Read at a special meeting of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, held in New York, 
May 19, 1922. 
I speak as an operator of cargo steamersin both the coastwise and the overseas trade. 
Many of the problems are substantially the same in domestic as they are in foreign com- 
merce. But as it is the internationally competitive trade which is now attracting the chief 
attention, I will devote most of what I have to say to considerations applicable to that field, 
though not forgetful of the other. 
Never before in maritime history have operators had to wrestle with the problems of so 
great a suddenly created merchant marine. In other nations the growth of shipping has been 
gradual. Here in America our gross register tonnage went up from 8,871,000 in 1917 to 
18,282,000 in 1921. All of the amount of this increase was in ships designed for interna- 
tional commerce. 
Not only has our tonnage thus rapidly multiplied, but American owners and operators 
have been compelled to face, in most cases with little experience, the exigencies of strange 
new trade with the ports of distant foreign countries. As I survey the situation I cannot but 
be surprised not that their mistakes have been so many but that they have been relatively 
so few. Operating organizations that five years ago had no particular knowledge of foreign 
trade now have excellent organizations and are working with smartness and efficiency. Not 
that there is not much yet to be learned by many of us, but I feel that a majority of Ameri- 
can operators have thrown themselves into their new work with energy and determination, 
and that very remarkable results have been achieved in a relatively brief time. 
Except for the vessels acquired before the war, which in many cases were carefully de- 
signed for the work in hand, it cannot be said that the merchant marine as a whole is 
especially adapted to its particular requirements. The new government-owned fleet was built 
not to constitute an ideally symmetrical merchant shipping but for the one imperative pur- 
pose of winning the war. Because of the supreme need of haste, the new fleet consists to 
altogether too great a degree of steamers of comparatively low speed and of the “tramp” 
order. We are lacking, of course, in swift passenger steamers, but we are lacking also in 
cargo steamers of the so-called liner type, which after all, if not the backbone of a merchant 
marine, is a class of ship of very great importance. This undeniably handicaps our owners 
and operators who contemplate the development of a cargo liner service, for vessels which 
have no reserve speed will necessarily find it difficult to maintain a regularity of service, 
especially in the trade like that of the winter months on the North Atlantic. 
However, a considerable proportion of one-half of the steel tonnage of the Shipping 
Board which is characterized as good tonnage contains many ships fit for what may be de- 
scribed as the berth service to distant foreign ports, like the 7,800-deadweight-ton Hog Island 
ships, the 8,800-ton freighters and the larger shelter-deck and other steamers whose capacity 
in a few cases runs up to a maximum of 12,000 tons. Here is a fleet not to be despised in 
any survey of the world’s shipping, and until we secure better steamers, these, outside of the 
“tramp” or bulk cargo service, must be regarded, together with the pre-war ships of the older 
companies, as the main, active, operating backbone of our merchant marine. 
First of the problems of American ship operators in this connection is the hard, unde- 
niable fact that they have to pay more money for the wages and subsistence of their crews 
than do their European or Japanese competitors. Let us assume that the Shipping Board 
