Travels in Philadelphia/Hog Island
HOG ISLAND
My only regret was that my friend John Fitzgerald didn't take Rudyard Kipling or William McFee or Philip Gibbs down to Hog Island, instead of a humble traveler whose hand can never do justice to that marvelous epic of human achievement. It would be worth Mr. Kipling's while to cross the Atlantic just to see the Island.
Far across the low-lying meadows the great fringe of derricks rises against the sky. Along a beautiful solid highway, over the Penrose Ferry drawbridge and past the crumbled ramparts of old Fort Mifflin, motors and trolley cars now go flashing down to the huge shipyard, where eighteen months ago a truck struggled along a miry country road carrying enough lumber to put up a timekeeper's shack. The story of that great drama of patient courage and effort lies behind and underneath all one sees at Hog Island. As we walked along the marvelous stretch of fifty shipways, each carrying a vessel in course of construction, and as Fitz and I stood on the bridge of the Saluda, one of the eleven steamers now getting their finishing touches at the seven huge piers, one had a vision of the Island as it was during that first winter. Engineers and laborers wrestled with frozen swamp and blizzard snows. Workmen were brought from Philadelphia day by day, roped in like sardines in open trucks, arriving numbed to the bone. Perhaps some day there will come some poet great enough to tell the drama of Hog Island as it ought to be told. The men who gritted their teeth and put it through will never tell. They are of the old stalwart breed that works with its hands. As they talk you can divine something of what they endured.
I don't believe there is a more triumphant place on earth than Hog Island these days. Ships are the most expressive creatures of men's hands, and as I stood with Fitz on the bridge of the Saluda and looked out through a driving rain on the comely gray hulls of those 7500-ton cargo carriers, it was hard to resist the thought that each of them had a soul of her own and was partaking in the general exultation. Eight ships now going about their business on the world's waters, eleven at the outfitting piers getting ready to smell blue water, and fifty on the ways—the Island is launching one every Saturday—that is the record. Smoke was drifting from the funnels of several, whose turbine engines were getting their tuning up.
These thousand-foot piers, each of which can accommodate four 8000-ton ships at a time, will one day make Philadelphia one of the world's greatest ports. And the thought that every lover of seafaring will bring away with him is that these fabricated ships, built according to a set plan with interchangeable parts, are beautiful ships. Humble cargo carriers, but to an untutored eye they have much of the loveliness of form of some of the stateliest liners. Looking into the newly finished chartroom, wheelroom and other deckhouses of the Saluda, I envied her future master.
We climbed down steep steel ladders to look at the engine and boiler rooms. No grimy stokehold on these ships—they are oil-burners. One of the furnaces was lit, and through the half-open door one could see a roaring glow of flame. In the engine room quiet and skillful workmen were doing mysterious things to a huge turbine. The shining cylinders and huge pistons of the old reciprocating engine were missing; in their place a bewildering complex of wheels and valves and asbestos covered piping. Looking down from above the engine room was a vast echoing cavern, spotted with orange electric bulbs, with the occasional groan and humming of electric motors and men in overalls moving quietly about their tasks. The quietness of Hog Island is one of its curiously impressive features. It is not a wilderness of roaring, frenzied machinery. Everything moves with efficient docility. Even the riveting guns that echo inside the hollow caves of unfinished hulls are hardly as clamorous as I had expected. In the plate and angle shops vast traveling cranes swing overhead with the ease and silence of huge dark birds. Acetylene torches, blowing dainty little wisps of blue-gold flame, slice through half-inch steel plates while the dissolving metal dribbles down in yellow bubbles and streamers and a shower of brilliant sparks flies off gently and quietly. Great wedges descend on flat plates and bend them into right angles with only a soft crunch.
Scaling tall scaffolds we clambered over one of the half-finished hulls, a naked shell of steel echoing with sudden fierce outbursts of riveting. As it was raining the out-of-door riveting had ceased, as whenever there is danger of water getting under the flange of the rivet there is a liability of the work not being quite watertight. But between decks some of the men were hard at work. Across the deck red-hot rivets came flying through the air from the brazier; these were deftly caught in a metal cone by the passer. With a long pair of tongs he inserts the glowing finger of metal in the hole; the backer-up holds it rigid with a compressed-air hammer, while the riveter, on the other side of the plates, mushrooms down the shining stalk of the rivet with his air gun. It is fascinating to watch the end of the rivet flattening under the chattering blows of the gun. An expert riveting team can drive several hundred rivets a day, and when paid on piecework the team gets six and one-half cents per rivet. This is divided among the team, usually in the proportion of 40 per cent to the riveter, 30 per cent to the backer-up and 15 per cent each to heater and passer. Many expert riveters earn as much as $60 a week.
We crawled under the bottom of the Schoodic which is to be launched tomorrow morning. She had just had her first coat of paint, and her tall, graceful bow loomed high in air on the slanting shipway. Mr. White, the engineer in charge of the launchings, was kind enough to show me the ingenious system of shores, packing and "sandjacks" which holds up the hull on the ways and the special Hog Island grease which is used to ease the ship's slide toward the water. The cunning manipulation by which the ship's great weight is thrown off the shores onto the "sandjacks," and then lowered by removing the sand from these iron boxes, would require an essay in itself. Not one of Hog Island's launchings—and they have had nineteen—has been marred by any hitch. Mr. White told me that his gang of 120 men can put through a launching in two hours and a half from the time they first begin work.
In the training school, where about 200 men are learning the various shipbuilding trades, 92 per cent of the pupils are former soldiers and sailors. They are all men of powerful physique, but many of them were in sedentary clerical occupations before the war. Many a man who has served in the army has no taste now to re-enter a trade that will keep him indoors eight or ten hours a day. I must confess to an envy of those brawny fellows who were learning to drive rivets. And after the army pay of $30 or so a month it must seem good to get $20 a week while learning the job.
Hog Island is a poem, a vast bracing chant of manly achievement in every respect, that is, save the names of the ships they are building down there. I don't think Hog Island workmen will ever quite forgive Mrs. Wilson for the names she chose for their cherished and beautiful ships! Quistconck, Saccarappa, Sacandaga, Saguache, Sapinero, Sagaporack, Schoodic, Saugus, Schroon—what will homely sailormen make of these odd Indian syllables? As one said to me, whimsically, "Think of some wireless operator, calling for help, trying to get that name across!"
We must assume, however, that no Hog Island ship will ever be in distress, from her own fault at any rate. The experiment of "fabricated" ships was watched with eagerness by all shipping experts some of whom didn't believe it could be successful. The first chapter of Hog Island's epic closes fitly with this cablegram, received the other day from the American International Shipbuilding Corporation's representative in Rome:
Rome, March 16.—Quistconck arrived March 8th, Savona. Excellent voyage. Has been inspected by representatives of government, steamship companies and banks. Opinion favorable. Hope you will be able to send more of that type.