106 STRUCTURAL STEEL STANDARDIZED CARGO VESSELS. 



consumption of the turbine when operating at full power should not exceed 12.5 

 pounds per shaft horse-power. 



The storage capacity for fuel oil is 660 tons, carried in the double bottom, which 

 will be sufficient to operate the vessel 7,000 miles. 



The ships are fully equipped with all necessary auxiliaries and deck machinery 

 with comfortable quarters for a crew of 60 men, including 22 men for military op- 

 erations. Like all other ships building for the Emergency Fleet Corporation, the 

 equipment is complete in every detail. 



Referring to the fabrication and assembly of these ships, which undoubtedly 

 is of the greatest interest to our members, the total weight of structural steel required 

 for one of these ships is 1,564 tons, 462 tons being in shapes and 1,102 tons in 

 plates. The only ship sections used in the design were a few bulb angles at both 

 ends, amounting to i^ per cent of the total weight, or 23 tons. Under our con- 

 tract all drawings were to be approved by both the American Bureau of Shipping and 

 Lloyd's Register. This meant that, wherever in any particular the rules of the two 

 societies dififered, we had to adopt the more stringent rule, and this resulted in a 

 heavier ship than would have obtained by classification in one society. Notwith- 

 standing the increase in weight between these ships and those built with ship classi- 

 fication steel it has been demonstrated that commercial structural shapes were used 

 advantageously and did greatly relieve the steel mills from furnishing classification 

 ship material. 



Ninety-six per cent of the total weight of the hull was fabricated at outlying es- 

 tablishments. Twenty-eight steel mills supplied material to 56 fabricating plants, not 

 to mention the contributive labors of 200 foundries, machine, pipe, joiner and equip- 

 ment shops which figure more or less in the building of a cargo carrier. The fabri- 

 cating shops are scattered from Wisconsin to Massachusetts and as far south as 

 Virginia, and inasmuch as the parts are fabricated in such a large number of dififer- 

 ent shops and as the individual parts must be interchangeable, one of the first 

 considerations was to make necessary provision for giving the information to the 

 fabricating shops in such a manner as to insure accuracy of work and speed of 

 production. 



It was the bridge engineer working in conjunction with the naval architect who 

 properly interpreted the details of ship fabrication into the language of the bridge 

 shops, thereby permitting the structural shops to fabricate the complicated ship ma- 

 terial with the tools and facilities they had in hand, an operation that many old line 

 shipbuilders questioned could be carried out successfully. So far as the straight parts 

 of the parallel middle body, flat tank tops and flat decks were concerned it was an 

 easy matter. It was simply a case of making detail drawings exactly as they would 

 be made for a railroad bridge giving definite location by dimension of every hole, 

 rivet and each piece of steel. In all some 330 drawings were made of details of hull 

 fabrication. From these drawings all the steel was ordered from the mills exactly to 

 the length required. In the molded portion of the ship, however, the problem be- 

 came more complicated to the bridge engineer, as this section of the shell could not 



