Beginning this week, U.S. merchant ships will be launched at the rate of one a day.
This was news that the British were delighted to hear last week from the U.S. Maritime Commission. But the bulk of the Maritime Commission's new ships will be followed by few seamen's benedictions as they put out to sea.
Most of them are "Liberty" or EC2 ships, stopgap craft, built to beat Germany. Their commercial life expectancy is only five to seven years—about a third that of normal merchant vessels. No shipowner gives a nautical damn about...
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