National Defense: Flivver Ships

Moored to a shipyard dock at Orange, Tex. last week lay a cargo vessel that may break the back of Adolf Hitler. She not only looked crazy—with a high flanged bow, a low stern, only one turret-like house amidships and five low hatches on her flush 270-ft. deck—but she broke most of the accepted rules of ship construction.

She has no keel. She has no ordinary propeller shaft. She has no costly marine engines. Fore & aft she is just a hollow shell for holding cargo. Her power plant consists of sixteen 110-h.p. Chrysler gasoline engines geared in teams of four to four shafts that run straight down through her bottom to four 6-ft. propellers.

In short, she is a ship designed to be built cheap, to be built fast, to be built in quantity out of common materials by men who have learned the elaborate skill of shipbuilding—a flivver of a ship to be turned out en masse to win the Battle of the Atlantic.

This is the Sea Otter, built in little over a month by the U.S. Navy and now awaiting her sea trials.

Her qualities are extraordinary. She displaces 2,240 tons, and has a cargo capacity of 1,600. But she draws only 11 ft. when fully loaded—which means that others like her may be built far from the sea. Instead of a crew of 25-30 men usually needed to run a ship of her size, she requires only eight to twelve. All hands live in the cylindrical turret amidships—live there for the entire voyage, for with a freeboard (when loaded) of only 9 ft., her decks will be awash in all but the calmest weather. Carrying some 37,000 gallons of gas, she has a cruising range of better than 7,000 miles, enough to take her to England and back without refueling. If one of her 6-ft. propellers is fouled, it can be drawn through a well in her bottom to be repaired. If one of her motors burns out, another can quickly be bolted down to replace it (she carries four spares). Split neatly into eight watertight compartments, she is expected to remain afloat even if some of them are damaged.

Only last February two men thought up the Sea Otter over a luncheon table in Washington. One was tall, balding Commander Hamilton V. Bryan (U.S.N., ret.), the other, white-thatched Warren Noble, an automotive engineer. Because automobile production was soon to be cut, they decided that their ship would utilize automobile instead of marine engines, should be constructed of the ½in. and ⅜in. steel ordinarily rolled out in abundance for the auto industry.

Their first designs were no great shakes. Presently they were guided to famed yacht-designer William Starling Burgess. Burgess visualized an all-welded ship without a keel that would derive its strength from a series of 22-in. beams running lengthwise along its outer bottom. Going the whole hog in unorthodoxy, Burgess decided to put propellers amidships, plant all the housing in a central cylindrical section. With a workable design on paper, the trio took their idea to Secretary of the Navy Knox.

But the experiment might have been a long time ripening had it not been for a Manhattan lawyer, Roland Livingston Redmund. Mr. Redmund, whose wife is a member of the Delano clan and first cousin of the President, was formerly counsel for the New York Stock Exchange. When the Navy could find no money to build an experimental ship, he put up the money out of his own pocket to build an 80-ft. model. The model was launched last spring and did better in speed and performed better in rough seas than even its designers anticipated. Meanwhile the idea had been put up to Franklin Roosevelt, who gave the nod.

What the Sea Otter may mean in the Battle of the Atlantic can only be guessed. It is plenty fast enough for convoys (which run about nine knots). Since it lies almost as low in the water as a sub marine and leaves no telltale ribbon of smoke, it will be hard for U-boats to spot if it travels alone.

When Great Britain was shopping for small cargo ships recently, the cheapest bid she got was $1,000,000 apiece. The first full-size Sea Otter cost about $250,000. Built in quantity, such ships will cost $100,000 less. According to the original idea of the designers, they might be turned out in shoals, sent on one trip to Britain with cargo and promptly scrapped there—their Chrysler engines going into trucks, their steel used in British steel mills. But the British have decided to keep the first 750 sent over for use as trawlers, etc.

Another use has already been found for the flivver ships. Since their hollow bottoms can be used for oil as well as for other cargo, Harold Ickes wants ten to relieve the Atlantic seaboard oil shortage.