NAVY: Yachts into Minelayers

The U. S. Navy names its ships according to rule: cruisers are named for cities, battleships for States, submarines for fish, transports for deceased commandants of the U. S. Marine Corps.* Last week there was a minor crisis in the Navy Department : they had run out of names for transports. Only 17 men have commanded the Marine Corps since it was organized in 1775 and three of them are still alive.

When the Navy transport list last week reached a total of 14 (a year ago it was only three), Navy namers had to trespass on the long list of dead Marine Corps heroes.

To back up the fleet with troop-carriers, the Navy bought such craft as American Mail Line’s President Grant, Dollar Steam Ship Co.’s President Jackson (renamed Harris and Zeilin), the Grace Liners Santa Barbara and Santa Maria (now Mc-Cawley and Barnett}. But the Navy is buying a lot more than transports. Since July 1, 79 auxiliaries have been added to the fleet—for service as ammunition ships, oilers, minesweepers, floating hospitals, tugs, sub-chasers, tenders for seaplanes and surface craft.

Biggest haul the Navy made was the fleet of Panama Pacific Line, five 8,278-ton combination freight and passenger vessels taken over last weekend. Most expensive was the oiler Esso Albany, bought from Standard Oil of New Jersey for $3,214,000, and renamed Sabine. Biggest bargain was the 597-ton Diesel-powered barkentine Intrepid, now the Navy’s training ship Sylph. Intrepid, steel-hulled, glossy with imported teak cabins and deck houses, cost $1,250,000 when she was built in 1930 for Walter Patten Murphy of Chicago. Owner Murphy, onetime railroad brakeman who made a pile out of corrugated freight-car ends (and once gave $6,735,000 to Northwestern University), turned over Intrepid for the bottom price —$1. Other dollar-a-yacht men: Manhattan Physicist Alfred Lee Loomis and Boston Lawyer Robert Frederick Herrick.

Plushiest billets for Navy men are on two coastal minelayers, formerly Mrs. Hiram Edward Manville’s Hi-Esmaro and Engineer-Manufacturer Edward Andrew Deeds’s Lotosland. Hi-Esmaro (sold for $150,000) is a glossy, seagoing jewel with a $10,000 figurehead, seven baths, teak paneling, a royal suite with an oversize bed installed for lanky King Gustaf of Sweden, whose nephew, Count Folke Bernadotte, is a Manville son-in-law. Lotos-land carried a seaplane on her deck, an electric organ in her salon, walnut paneling on cabin bulkheads. Before the Navy started to refit her, the organ came out, to play for Deeds’s guests ashore. But, although they were painted grey, the Navy kept one reminder of their luxurious past. The sleek teak and walnut stayed where they were.

*Some others: destroyers for officers and enlisted men of the Navy and Marine Corps, Secretaries of the Navy, Congressmen and inventers, ocean-going tugs for Indian tribes, minesweepers for birds, repair ships for mythological characters, gunboats for towns, aircraft carriers for historical naval vessels or battles.