10 UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN SHIP CONSTRUCTION 
country for plans of a merchant ship. I would like to say that if there is any college or 
university requiring such a set of plans, if they will apply to us at Newport News we 
shall be delighted to give it to them. I personally believe that a set of plans of that 
character, every one of the necessary plans to build a ship, will be of more use to the stu- 
dent in naval architecture than half of the lectures he receives. 
I would like to disagree a little with the idea that working in the shop and turning 
a bar on a machine does not teach a man how to build a ship. The fault we find in con- 
nection. with the university students is that they are not sufficiently familiar with the 
details of construction, and by these details of construction I mean not merely the fitter’s 
work. We want a man who knows how to make a casting, and who knows what a pattern 
ought to be like and how the machine details ought to be worked out. He is quite as 
useful to us on the hull side of shipbuilding as the man who has never seen anything but 
fitter’s work. 
In our apprentice system at Newport News, the one thing I have fought for all 
along is that our apprentices who expect to complete their course as hull draughtsmen 
shall not be confined in the yard merely to work in the ship-fitters’ department, but that 
they shall go into the machine shop and foundry, the pattern shop and carpenter 
shop, the joiner department, and into any other department where they become familiar 
with ship details. There is no doubt that these men will learn the ship-fitting part in 
connection with their own work. It seems to me that one thing the universities and 
colleges should teach a young man is that he need not worry so much about becoming a 
splendid executive. We will endeavor to attend to that after we get him, if they will 
only properly start the man and give him knowledge enough of ship construction and 
ship details to be of use when we first get him. We will not worry particularly about the 
necessity of teaching him some of the necessary calculations to carry on his work, or 
about his absorbing the necessary details for advancement; if he possess suitable 
material for an executive, we shall certainly endeavor to develop those qualities in him. 
Mr. WattTeR M. McFaruann, Honorary Vice-President:—As one of the Committee 
on Papers, I was much pleased when this paper by Professor Chapman was submitted, 
not so much on account of the specific statements made in it, although the paper is an 
excellent one, but because it would bring the subject up here where we have so many 
practical men, so called, from the shipbuilding and allied industries, and would give 
them a good chance to discuss the work of technical schools and say wherein they think 
the courses at such schools are good or else are deficient. 
I have taken a great interest in technical education all my adult life. It happened 
not many years after I left the Naval Academy that I was assigned as an assistant pro- 
fessor at Cornell University and spent a couple of years there, so I got some knowledge 
of the professorial attitude; and in recent years I have had the privilege of being one of 
the trustees of Webb Institute, where I have given a great deal of attention to the matter. 
The thing which has always impressed me for many years has been, as stated both 
in the paper and by Professor Crouch, that the time at the school is so limited, and there 
is so much to teach that the course must be a compromise. It seems to me that the 
proper attitude for the shops or the shipyards, to which the boys go afterwards, should 
be to recognize that the school has done its part if it has given them a thorough training 
in fundamentals on which they can build when they go out into practical work. 
Many of you probably remember the time—at least the older ones do—when the 
