HUNS BUILDING CONCRETE SHIPS.

Taihape Daily Times, 12 March 1918, Page 6

HUNS BUILDING CONCRETE SHIPS.

Captain Persius, naval correspondent of the Berlin Daily Paper, states that, owing to prospective shortage of wood, steel, and iron for shipbuilding after the war, leading German and Austrian yards are preparing to use ferro-concrete on a large scale. Yards are now being reconstructed to that end. Persius takes the view that all the great shipbuilding countries will be put to the same necessity as Germany to find substitutes for wood, iron and steel. Germany, he thinks, will be in a better position than any of the rest for ferro-concrete construction, because "We possess the most important cement industry in the world. We have far outstripped France, the country where the most versatile uses were formerly made of cement, while we have given the English, the inventors of cement, the fiercest com-

petition in the markets of the world. There seems every reason to hope that in future the largest ships flying the German flag will be partially of ferro-concrete construction."