The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

February, 1919 lieve that the new wage will continue for long. A master on a Japanese ship prior to the war may have re- ceived but $50 a month, although it is true that such a wage was a minimum. A wage of $200 for a Japanese master has been known to have been paid, but it was unusual. Japanese crews are employed on in- dividual contracts, instead of a fixed schedule. Many Japanese ships have been operated under charter by the shipping board. The charters pro- vided that all overtime should be paid for “at the current rate.” This re- sulted in giving the Japanese seamen the rate of overtime prevailing in the American merchant marine. It is be- lieved the. experience of the crews under these circumstances may lead them to demand higher wages of their own operators when the ships are re- turned to their owners. The United States shipping board has established a new sea_ service bureau as a central agency for the Output Steadily employment of crews for all mer- chant ships operated by the board. The service was inaugurated Jan. 1 and eventually will operate through offices in the principal American ports. OT only seamen but mates, engineers, the cook,” will be signed on for duty. Vessels privately operated will be given the privilege of shipping crews through the bureau on the same foot- ing as those operated by the shipping board. Capt. Irving L. Evans, Cleve- land, a former shipmaster and an admiralty lawyer, was transferred from the board’s recruiting service to head the new bureau, which. was formed by combining an agency of the same name in _ the service with the existing shipping agencies of the board’s division of operations, that hitherto has manned the ships operated by the board. In addition to placing experienced sea- farers in employment, the new bureau masters, “all hands and recruiting THE MARINE REVIEW 8] will ship out for sea duty all the graduates of the shipping board’s training system. Three hundred applications a day from soldiers of the selective army wishing to enter the merchant marine on getting their discharge are being received by shipping board recruiting agents at army camps. The board has sent a representative of its recruiting service to each of 30 cantonments to present to the soldiers there awaiting release from military service facts about opportunities for a career in the merchant marine. Many of the re- sponses are from men who followed the sea before being selected for mili- tary duty. .A majority, however, are from youths who have never been to sea, but are drawn to a seafaring life by a spirit of adventure and a desire to embark on a career promising sub- stantial rewards. Actual recruiting of these men is not done at the camps but each applicant for sea service signs a card, giving his qualifications.’ Below Losses Tk accompanying chart illustrates the world’s out- put and loss of merchant tonnage and also that of England for each quarter from the opening of hostilities up to Sept. 30, 1918. Some of the major figures follow: The war cost the world 15,053,786 gross tons of vessels of which 9,031,828 gross tons were of ships flying the British flag, comprising nearly two-thirds of the total losses. New construction to the amount of 10,849,527 gross tons partially made good the enormous loss while enemy tonnage captured amounted to 2,392,675 gross tons more bringing the total tonnage available for offsetting the destruction up to 13,242,202. Thus the net pear wie ae es ee zonoas Se a ee aie pea Pe Ceeaeaee sie rg ne a re et note Be ie i YE PL hea ace 600000 42.00, 000 O L500 000 Eee oe Lae a ee yee 2 Se ee A | Senile tp st fnew § yr aes ie NY La {000.000 5, : ee Selo a a a , S oagaad |} — ef eee ; ted —— : , pies een eet a Wit es es Pee ae 90, 000 : as eee eA etl IEE ees £00,000 sant om Gentes cese 2 ade nes ee ao oe OO ae ee oe ERD. ZT (fi gO GRO itty (fk ND. GAD gly a eee 3RO. 2TH y (ST ND. FR. lquarrer] QUARTER [ __QUARTER | QUARTER QUARTER | i ae LAS LH LW 7 LG loss is 1,811,584 gross tons. These are world figures. The direct British losses are more striking. To the British loss of 9,031,828 gross tons, English shipyards contributed in new construction 4,342,296 gross tons while 530,000 tons were purchased abroad and 716,520 gross tons were captured from the enemy. The total credit is thus 5,588,816 gross tons, leaving the net British loss 3,443,012 gross tons. These figures are brought up to Oct. 31, 1918. Between that time and the signing of the armistice.only 14,075 gross tons of ships were lost through enemy action, including 11,916 gross tons of British ships and 2159 gross tons of vessels of other nations.