OCR Text |
Show i NAUTICAL :- :-i :-i -: -: NOVELTIES The following "Nautical Novelties" are furnished by the U. S. Navy Recruiting Re-cruiting Station at Salt Lake City: Since the world war, the major, naval powers have effected considerable consider-able limitation of naval armament. However, proposals . for limitation of land armament and of air armaments are yet without international acceptance. accept-ance. When a new navy ship is built there is not a state but what furnishes some of the raw material, the minerals, woods, fibres, oils, and clays or manufactured manu-factured articles that go to make a, completed ship. Eighty-five per cent of the total cost of a ship goes to labor, la-bor, direct or indirect. Only forty per cent of the total cost of a ship is spent in a shipyard where the ship is built;! the other sixty per cent is spent throughout the entire country for la-bor la-bor and for raw materials. About a hundred years ago flog- j ging as a punishment was a common i occurrence, not only in navies but aboard all merchant vessels as well. The culprit was lashed to the gratings by his foot, and to the rigging by his wrists. All hands were piped aft to witness punishment and the flogging was administered by the boatswain of the ship with the well known "cat-o-nine-tails." The cat was kept in a green canvas bag. Thus originated the expression, "The cat's out of the bag." At that time it meant trouble ahead, but has deteriorated into a ' more modern version depicting a slip of the tongue. Many of the traditions and customs of the U. S. navy have come down to us from 'the British navy, because many of our early naval officers previously pre-viously served under the British flag afloat. One old, but now discarded, custom of the American navy came to us from the French navy namely, ' assigning the polLshing of the ship's bell to the ship's cook. At the present, pres-ent, time, the bugler usually is assigned as-signed this task., : ' The new naval airship, Macon, a sister ship to the unfortunate Akron, has a length of 785 feet, and a maximum maxi-mum diameter of 132.9 feet. The Macon Ma-con has eight propellers. The frame is a latticed web of duralumin; the principal ingredient of which is aluminum, alum-inum, which gives lightness, alloyed with copper which gives strength, i There are 10,000,000 individual num- Quite unusual was the deliberation gn0, with which Dr. John Klutho, 65, com- 0irn mitted suicide in Los Angeles recent- in ly. He rigged up a machine whereby 'M he fired a bullet into his head as he 5 'll lay in a box. Equally unusual was his a ar farewell note, which read: "To grand- "'"J ma I apologize. To my sisters I , Jm am sorry. To the rest of the world ; jjr Nerts." ... ispst berel parts, 54,000 tiny flat braces and 6,503,000 rivets. Her dead weight empty is 221,000 pounds. The 6,500,-C00 6,500,-C00 cubic feet of helium cost the government gov-ernment about $74,550 to produce and refine at its Amarillo, Texas, plant. The eight engines, four on each side, totaling 4,480 horse-power, are carried car-ried within the frame, the propellers only protruding. Well forward on the under side is the control carriage. ' Five fast little single seat biplanes, ! with . wing spans of 25 feet 6 inches, ' can be carried in a sort of marsupial pouch. Because of its color, bluejackets blue-jackets have nick-named the Macon the "platinum blonde." The first trip across the Atlantic by hydorplane was made by the navy's NC-4, which flew from Trespassey, New Foundland, to Lisbon, Portugal, in May 1919, in 26 hours and 47 minutes. min-utes. ... |