The Steamboating Forum

I've been working on and off building a little 20 foot boat for about three years (or is it four). How long do you think it would take to build a 440 foot steam ship?

I was astonished to find that Liberty Ship "Robert E Peary" was built in 4 days!
See http://www.usmm.org/peary.html
Any other tales of long or short builds?
John

In about 1985 while working at Tampa Ship in Tampa Florida I built several T5 Tankers for the USN. The Paul Buck was a nightmare. I was an Outside Machinist and one of the certified mechanics on the engine build. The engine was a 5 cylinder Sulzer 5RTA, nearly 3 stories tall and 18,000 hp.. I was there the day we cranked her up for the first time. She fired right off, ran fine for about 45 seconds. Then lights on the control panel started flashing and the automatic shut down kicked in. The board shows the fuel pressure was too high so off we went to the fuel filters and pumps. When we opened the first filter it was full of “Black Sand” sandblast media. The second filter was the same. It seems some pipefitters fit some fuel lines that were still full of sandblast grit. We had to fix it.
Every bearing surface had to be polished and every bearing had to be replaced. The Factory rep said at least 6 months to do the job. My crew did it in 6 weeks! There were 14 (seven mechanics and seven helpers) on day shift and 14 more on nights working 12 on and 12 off. We disassembled cleaned polished and replaced everything that moved.
Six weeks later the Buck went on sea trials. The factory rep threw us a hell of a party, the shipyard couldn’t have cared less.
About the Liberty Ships, back in the 1980’s there was at least one still running cargo in the Caribbean, I’ve worked on her but I don’t remember her name.

Link to the Paul Buck
http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/65/651122.htm


Link to a Sulzer , This one is a seven cylinder mine were five cylinders.
http://tiny.cc/7qqmo

The steam yacht Medea, now in San Diego, was built in 51 days back in 1904, not bad for a vessel of her size.
Daniel

Johnlanark wrote:I've been working on and off building a little 20 foot boat for about three years (or is it four). How long do you think it would take to build a 440 foot steam ship?

I was astonished to find that Liberty Ship "Robert E Peary" was built in 4 days!
See http://www.usmm.org/peary.html
Any other tales of long or short builds?
John

Kaiser Shipyards built most of the Liberty ships of WWII at several yards. Since the ships were built in an "assembly line" process each yard, and crews within the yards competed for quickest construction times - after all, we were the "Arsenal of Democracy". Including at least one in the Portland, OR yard that was completed in under 24 hours!

If it takes 1 man 3 days to dig a hole then why does it take 3 men a week to do the same job?

I'm not entirely convinced that a longer job improves the quality either, though I'd hate to think of the quality of the Liberty ships.

Maltelec wrote:If it takes 1 man 3 days to dig a hole then why does it take 3 men a week to do the same job?

I'm not entirely convinced that a longer job improves the quality either, though I'd hate to think of the quality of the Liberty ships.

Any ship carrying supplies during WWII had a life expectancy of one round trip. But many resurgent European shipping companies rebuilt their depleted fleets after WWII with "war surplus" Liberty and Victory ships. And some of these were still hauling cargo at the millennium. Even though American workmanship has been derided over the years, we can, and still do, "build good".

The whole story of the Liberty ship is fascinating and the scale of the programme immense .

The original design was based on a Wearside design for a simple riveted hull of 10,000 tons deadweight (7,000 tons gross) with a speed of 10.5 knots . As such it was built in Canada , the USA and UK as Fort , Ocean and Empire class.
In 1941 the design for the USA was modified to better suit it to mass production and prefabrication and as such was built as the Liberty class .

Such was the scale and momentum of the program in the USA that the change to welded construction (amongst the other changes) barely slowed things at all . This was because hardly any re-training was done : a huge expansion was taking place and tens of thousands of men and women were joining the programe , they were trained on the welded design from the start.

Henry Kaiser (1882-1967) was in charge of the progamme , he had started his business life as a photographer's apprentice , took over the company by the time he was 20 and then moved West . Amongst his work experience prior to leading the Libery ship programme was heading the combine which built the Hoover Dam , but nothing to do with ships . So he didn't know that what he was about to do was impossible , he just went ahead and did it .
Eighteen NEW shipyards were built costing some $300 million , eight on the Atlantic with 62 slipways , six on the Pacific with also 62 slipways and four on the Gulf of Mexico with 35 slipways .

The record-breaking build times , although genuine , are slightly deceptive and were largely PR exercises (very successful ones) Early ships took about 230 days to build , this was reduced with experience to an average of around 60 days .
What allowed the very rapid build time was the system of mass production and prefabrication so that large sections were ordered centrally and delivered to the slips for assembly .
This was expensive, but very fast . Expensive because although it reduced the build time it increased the man (and woman) hours needed .
The average cost and manhours for a US built Liberty ship was $1.78 million (£450,000) and 560,000 manhours For a UK built Empire class $712,000 and 350,000 manhours . Prefabrication was used less in the UK and the work force was by and large the more experienced pre war force (ship building was a reserved occupation , so few men were lost to the armed forces.) So although the manhours taken in the UK were less the build time was longer .

In all 2580 Libery ships and 132 variants such as tankers were built in US yards totalling 19.5 million tons gross 28.7 million tons deadweight,very roughly the same as the total for the whole world in the same time frame immediately preceding the war .
I'm afraid I don't have the figures for the Fort and Empie classes .

Regards Edward

My father ran a large (understatement!) tail shaft lathe at the Portland Oregon Kaiser shipyard. They had an interesting arrangement to insure quality control. The machinist who did the shaft was then assigned to oversee the installation crew. "Screw it up? You deal with it."

I still have a chip from a roughing cut. 1/8" feed on a 2" deep cut. Big blue colored two turn curl. I leave it in the chip pan of my 10" swing lathe for visiting machinists to marvel at.

At peak production there was a launching every shift. Three a day. But, as has been noted, there were a lot of slips so the completion time for a specific hull was more like months.

And, while completion could be defined as being launched, how would you determine the date of starting an assembly? Laying the keel? Starting the sub assemblies?

I have my new hull all formed in my mind. But it's not started yet (grins)

Mike, I call that the "gathering brain cells" stage!

Barbara has co-opted a phrase from modern technology. She describes me as being Geostationary. And from geology she describes my work pace as Tectonic.