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Show Traffic Charts of Oceans Keep Track of Shipping More Than 7000 Vessels Checked Daily by Highly High-ly Organized System Developed by United States Shipping Board. SOME idea of the enormous sea traffic which America has built up may bo hail from the statement state-ment that every six minutes nowadays some merchant vessel arrives and another departs from American ports. Including coastwise traffic, there is a departure from North Atlantic At-lantic seaports every eleven minutes, one for Europe every forty minutes. This rate of operation does not include in-clude vessels in the service of the army and navy; the ships which are weaving these inward and outwardbound wakes are merchant vessels under the control of the shipping board. This fleet now numbers more than 1500 ships, and because of the need that they do the utmost work they are capa-of capa-of in the shortest possible time, their movements are checked up with the same precision that obtains on railroads. rail-roads. Over them now is concentrated the authority of the shipping board, an authority absolute as that exercised by the director general of railroads over the railway systems. Eefore his induction into the office of chairman of the United States shipping ship-ping board, Edward N. Hurley was a business man employing modern methods meth-ods of efficiency. lie brought his business busi-ness methods into the administration of the shipping board. Each Movement Planned. Under his directions the division of planning and statistics of the shipping board, a highly important but little known part of that great organization, is charged with the duty of measuring the performances of the ships against their tasks. In order to do this it must know fully what the tasks are, and so it co-ordinates with the war industries and war trade boards in ascertaining and providing for this country's requirements re-quirements from abroad, working on month to month schedules as far in advance ad-vance as it is feasible or possible to forecast. The division of planning and statistics, statis-tics, under the direction of Er H. Gay, formerly dean of the Harvard graduate school of business, as its name indicates, indi-cates, does the planning for the use of the ships where they will do the most good. It works with the food administration admin-istration in planning tho shipping requirements re-quirements for foodstuffs, with tho war industries board in trying to solve the problem of providing the United States with the necessary raw materials from South America and other parts of the world, with the war trade board in pro-paring pro-paring and paring the lists of essential imports and exports, and with the war department in correlating shipping with the icquiremonts of the line of supplies tie western front. Vxhis big and complex work has re-. quired the shipping board to gather ( comprehensive information about, the commerce of this country the ships in actual operation and their relation to i the trades in which they are engaged. J As this compilation of data has pro-' pro-' seeded, as the country has gone more mS", more on a war basis, it has been found necessary to limit, the list of es- sential commodities to be. imported. The data relnting to the ships and their trade, which is thus gathered and recorded, furnish tho basis for the actual operation of the vessels that are under the control of the shipping board, and, to a considerable extent, for the operation of neutral vessels coming to this country or linking up somewhere with its trade. Plus the 1500 vessels under , the authority of the shipping hoard, subject to the orders of the shipping ship-ping control committee, tho records of the division of planning and statistics list .3000 engaged in commerce that bring commodities to the United States, and about 2500 others scattered around the globe, trading, for the most part, with the allies or their colonies. All told, the shipping board follows ' the movements of more than 7000 vessels or, roughby, about one-quarter of all the merchant ships in the world. Lloyd's register for June, 1914, shows a grand total for ail countries of 30,836 steam and sailing vessels over 100 tons. Method Is Graphic. The system employed by the division of planning and statistics in keeping tabs on 7000 ships is the Gantt progress prog-ress charts, a graphic method of measuring mea-suring performance against task. It has been thoroughly tried out and developed de-veloped in such highly organized manufacturing manu-facturing plants as the silk mills, the typewriter companies and the ordnance bureau of the war department. The charts show at a glance just what work the ships have to do and how they are doing it. They have been adapted to the shipping industry by Henry L. Gantt, the engineer who originated them, and under his supervision are now kept posted by Wallace Clark, one of his assistants. There are ten divisions to the sets of charts employed by the shipping board, one each for movements "or vessels, ves-sels, turn-arounds, ship charts of commodities, com-modities, individual commodity charts, summary of imports, individual trades, summary of trades, ship charts of exports, ex-ports, performances in ports and dock performances. A complete set of these charts contains about 200 photostated sheets. They are so arranged that they fold compactly to the length and width of a large square sheet of typewriting paper. About 1000 copies are prepared for distribution every ten days among the various government offices which require constant information about the movements of supplies. The purpose of the movement sheets is to keep in one place all information in regard to locations and movements of vessels so that at all times it is possible pos-sible to know where a vessel is, what she has done in the past, and to forecast from her actual performance the time it will take her to make future voyages. voy-ages. These sheets have columns ruled off for each day with double lines to mark off the weeks. Simple signs are used to indicate tho movements of the vessels. ves-sels. A right angle, opening to the I right, indicates the arrival of a vessel in port. An angle opening to the left indicates a departure from port. A line drawn to connect these two angles shows the time the vessel spends in port. Time Accurately Checked. The important story of time expended is told m a glance. Inaccurate reports re-ports are made plain. Mistakes in dates become immediately apparent because two different entries of movements move-ments cannot, of course, be written in the' same date space. Just how fast the ships aro making their voyages from port to port, where they are working work-ing aud when they are idling, what use, in short, they are making of their time, all these facts are told on the movement sheets by simple lines and symbols. For example, there is the entry for the speed ship, Tuckahoe, the collier that was built by the New York Shipbuilding Ship-building company in the record-breaking record-breaking time of thirty-seven days. The Tuckahoe is in the coal carrying trade between Baltimore and Boston. The chart reveals tersely, but fully, every trip the Tuckahoe has made since she was placed in commission, last May, the number of days in port, whether loading or unloading, the number num-ber of days at sea, cargo carried and the relation of that cargo to her capacity, ca-pacity, all these facts told by perpendicular perpen-dicular and horizontal lines plotted against the calendar. Perhaps the most interesting of all the port sheets deals with ships performances per-formances in New York harbor. Here the symbols and lines, crowding together to-gether like Chinese characters, tell tersely the whole story of each ship's stay in port. A brief acquaintance with the key to the symbols clears up the circles, angles and lines. How quickly one vessel comes and goes, how slowly another, the reasons for delay, de-lay, if . any, the chart shows at a glance, also facts about the ship's allocation, al-location, cargo and future destination, all condensed on a graphic chart. These charts reveal the work carried on by the various vessels, both in relation to the trade and with one another, what each ship is doing today, what it will do tomorrow, what it did last week and what is expected of it in the ensuing week; what her cargo capacity is, how much she is actually carrying, and the time it takes her to do her work. Efficiency Set Forth. On such charts the efficiently operated oper-ated vessels stand forth clearly; the slow ones show up in sharp contrast, as in all other war work it is results which count these days, and the ship charts of commodities tell the story quickly to the shipping board officials, and so provide them easily with the data they noed for ordering such changes as wiil deliver the goods. The use of ships in the essential trades is shown on special sets of charts what the requirements in those trades are and how the receipts match up with them. One glance at the sheet, for example, ex-ample, covering the movements in the nitrate trade with Chile, shows what each vessel in that trade is doing and what progress is being made; in 'short, the day to day status of that trade and the effectiveness of the ships. , You can tell quickly by the lines whether the ships are keeping up to their schedules, and, if anything is wrong, the reason for it. The vital importance of knowing know-ing at all times clearly the status of this trade and the ships engaged in it may be understood when it is stated that nitrate is one of the most essential ingredients in the making of war muni- tions and one of the best known1 fertilizers. fertil-izers. It is perhaps the most important foreign trade of this country today. Charts of Great Value. The condensed summaries of shipping and trade, and of both in relation to each other, which are prepared every ten days for department heads of the shipping board, war industries and war trade boards and for the food administration, adminis-tration, help shape the larger policies underlying the use of our ships m 'wartime. 'war-time. The charts reveal whether the ships allocated to the various traJes are enough, too many or too few; whether they are bringing in too little or too much; whether they are doiig their work on time, ahead of time or behind time, and whether the trade movement is just right, too slow or too fast. All these facts are shown in position to the fixed requirements, bj a few heavy and light horizontal lines plotted against the calendar. Similar charts serve to guide the bureau bu-reau of operations and shipping control committee in the assignment and direction' di-rection' of ships in the various trades listed as essential, and in which the requirements re-quirements have been definitely fixed by the war industries board. If the charts show, for example, that the country coun-try is ahead on certain imports, like sugar or bananas or cocoa, the snipping control committee can perceive those facts in a few moments, and with equal celerity know how much tonnage it may take from those trades temporarily and .put to work bringing in other essential commodities in which the movement may be behind the schedule of requirements. require-ments. By juxtaposition of requirements require-ments against deliveries the charts show the shipping control committee when any vessels may be spared from this or that commercial trade and released re-leased to the army. |
