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Show AAiscellanv The Eagle Boats. ? They are about to launch the first of, the Eagle boats, the unique submarine-4 chaslnff craft of a standardized type, of which Henry Pord has promised to have 200 afloat before the end of the year. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the Eagle boats are to be maritime flivvers. The Germans, who have doubtless doubt-less heard more about them than most of us have, are not failing to take thern seriously. They are not little craft, to begin with. They are more than 200 feet long in fact, they are destroyers without torpedo tubes. They are flat-, bottomed, square at the stern, sharp as a razor at the bow and draw only eight feet of water. They are departures from the accepted canons and tenets of naval achiteoture, but the model stood every test and no one doubts that they will deliver the goods In the war zone. They are the improvement in speed, power and seaworthiness over the smaller "chasers" that have figured so prominently promi-nently in the fight against the submarine menace. The remarkable thing is the speed with which the great plant to build them in has been put up and put in operation in Detroit since the plan was first talked over last winter. That plant is so vast that twenty-four of these 200-foot 200-foot ships are being put together under its roof at once and it takes a minute to walk from one of them to another, at that! "Put together" is just the term to use, by the way, for standardized steel sheets are delivered at the back of the plant, and the finished ships ore launched through the front door, readv for a voyage voy-age down the lakes, through the Erie canal and across the Atlantic. There Is not a forging or a rolled beam in an Eagle boat. Everything keel, frame, floors, beams, angles and all is pressed from sheet metal, cold, by machinery that cuts every piece to an exact pattern, pat-tern, punches the rivet holes and bends every part to its precise final shnpe. Building a ship that way means merely taking the numbered parts and riveting them fast. Now that the great plant is fairly started, the Eagle boats will be turned out at the rate of one a day-Boston day-Boston Herald. |