BUILDING SHIPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 February 1940, Page 5

BUILDING SHIPS

'TASK FACING ADMIRALTV MAKING UP LOSSES. CAPACITY OF PRIVATE YARDS. By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright. LONDON, February 3. Orders implementing the Government’s assumption of control of shipbuilding stipulate that all construction must be for Government departments unless the Admiralty grants a special licence. The same control will apply to repairs, alterations, and docking.

Persons concerned with ship construction or shipbuilding material must furnish the Admiralty with information regarding their business when demanded to do so.

The weekly journal, “The Economist,” commenting on the co-ordina-tion by the Admiralty of the construction and repair of both merchant and naval vessels as from February 1, reviews Britain's present building capacity of merchant ships. The journal says: “At the outbreak of the war our merchant shipbuilding capacity was about 2,000,000 gross tons per annum. In addition there were facilities for the construction of some 500,000 tons of naval vessels in the private shipyards. “The current volume of output of merchant vessels is at a rate of about 150,000 gross tons per annum. But during the first four months of the war the losses were at the rate of about 1,300.000 tons per annum. It should not bo difficult to increase the output to 1.500,000 tons per annum by simplification of designs and by the speeding up of construction. "The task facing the Admiralty is by no means an easy one, but Britain canal afford a repetition of the experience of the last war, when the output fell from 1,932,000 gross tons in 1913 to 608.000 gross tons in 1916 and recovered to only 1.348,000 tons by 1918."