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

MBITION to conquer new industrial worlds has A ever been characteristic of the Ford Motor Co., Detroit, but this instinct of the pioneer received unexpected and unparalleled impetus in 1925 when the company purchased 199 surplus war-built steamers from the United States shipping board and undertook to rein- carnate their metal and machinery in land service. In America ship scrapping was a sporadic art; in Europe it was little better organized. A reckless hacking- out of such metal and equipment as could readily be attacked, and abandonment of the jagged hulk. Never before had so many as ten score upstanding steel ships been assembled, and their wrecking organized on a methodical, progressive basis whose primary motive was the salvaging of every usable bit of material and equip- ‘A Cycle in Transportation ment down to mites of wood only 2 x 6 inches in size. No story of the war is more dramatic than this venture. How the larger of these marine orphans of the war emergency were dismantled at eastern shipyards, their vitals stowed away in the partially-reconditioned smaller lake-type ships, the whole towed through the treacherous waters of the North Atlantic and pinched through the narrow canals of the St. Lawrence route, the dissembling at the docks at Fordson and the manifold uses to which the equipment and scrap metal have been put, is a nar- rative of compelling interest. It is at once a text on ship scrapping and an epic of human achievement. Herewith the MARINE REVIEW begins publication of the history of this exploit, which has been divided into five installments. 199 Ships Are Bought: Salvage Plans Laid 1925, undertook a unique task, the salvage of a merchant armada. Lying idle at a dozen scattered moorages throughout the country were hundreds of war-built ships—ships which had been constructed with steel of exceptional quality and equipped with machinery of high grade, yet ships which, for a complexity of reas- ons, would never again put to sea under their own power. These ships were deteriorating rap- idly. Idleness was taking heavy toll. Corrosion was eating away good met- al. Exposure was destroying good Fis. MOTOR CO. on Aug. 18, equipment. Each year that passed saw further inroads of decay; many of the vessels had not- moved for half a decade or more. Swinging idly at their chains the ships exemplified titanic waste. Into their building had been poured un- computed hours of human labor and thought. Into them had been put honest workmanship and honest ma- terials. The vessels had been built on a vast scale, the greatest in the history of the world. Their deteriora- tion was commensurate. In their dis- use they represented that most sinis- ter of all wastes: the waste of human effort. MARINE REVIEW—August, 1928 The job which the Ford Motor Co. undertook was partially to end this waste. It offered to reconvert 199 of the ships into the basic mate- rials from which they had been made, and to put these materials once more into active use. The materials had been destined originally for trans- portation. Through the nature of the company’s activities, the reconversion would return them to that sphere, though on land rather than on sea. The Ford Motor Co.’s offer was made in response to a request from the United States shipping board, which had charge of the vessels. In conjunction with other firms the com- 21