O Enter The Concrete Ship LD MOTHER SHIPTON, in her famous prophecies, wrote: "Iron in the water shall float As easily as a wooden boat." but, while we have become accustomed now to seeing iron ships, even she did not have the temerity to suggest that we would one day seriously consider launching ships of reinforced concrete. Fantastic as the wooden ship proposition seemed from the first, when it was advanced to meet our sudden and unprecedented demand for ocean tonnage, it had, nevertheless, as a basis the well known fact that wood floats; whereas every child knows that iron sinks and stones sink. Yet it is more than probable that in the concrete ship proposition there is something more tangible and practical than in the revival of wooden ship building; not that in 48 the ship built of reinforced concrete we may expect to find something that will directly foil the U-boats and provide us with an overseas tonnage, but that there is a distinct and important function connected with shipping and ocean transportation that can perhaps be filled by concrete construction. Already we have denuded the Great Lakes and our coastwise transportation of all the tonnage that can be spared and that is suitable for overseas trade. Through our failure to develop our inland waterways to their capacity, we have in this emergency thrown a burden upon our railroads greater than they can bear. The Erie Canal, now approaching completion, should be able, in conjunction with the Great Lakes, to transport wheat, oats, corn, ore and all interior products to the seaboard in sufficiently large quantities to relieve this congestion but for the fact that the 1,000ton barges that are to be employed upon it |