One Day: 14 Ships

On one day last week 14 new merchant ships slid down U.S. ways, in shipyards from Quincy, Mass, to Portland, Ore. It was the record single-day launching since World War I.

The occasion--dubbed Liberty Fleet Day--was reminiscent of World War I in more ways than one. The nation the launchings were aimed at was the same: Germany. The reason for the ballyhoo was the same: to get the U.S. public behind a program designed to build more ships than German U-boats can sink. Said Franklin Roosevelt in a recorded speech broadcast at each yard: "We propose, to the best of our ability, to protect them from torpedo, from shell or from bomb."

Launched during the day were five of the new Ugly Ducklings, rechristened Liberty Ships; seven fancy cargo-&-passenger ships of the Maritime Commission's prewar building program; a tanker; an Army transport. And they were only a small part of the program: 1,200 new merchant ships, of 12,500,000 deadweight tons, by the end of 1943.

There were also nine other naval launchings during the week, as the 35,000-ton battleship Massachusetts, five destroyers and three minesweepers went down the ways. Two of the destroyers, the Hambleton and Rodman, launched in a twin ceremony at Kearny, N.J., were a month behind schedule. Reason: the shipbuilders' strike that finally forced Federal Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. to turn over its property to the Navy.

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