Word: cramping
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Great news came last week to Philadelphia's dusty, rusting Cramp shipyards on the Delaware River, which built wooden clippers, Civil War ironclads, World War I destroyers. The recently reorganized, refinanced Cramp Shipbuilding Co. (TIME, Sept. 23) got a $113,822,000 contract to build six cruisers for the U. S. Navy's second-ocean fleet, an additional $9,500,000 to rehabilitate and expand the abandoned yards...
...last 13 years those grass-grown, rusting acres have made Philadelphians melancholy. Four times attempts were made to reopen Cramp's; all four failed. Not even the Government's $400,000,000 merchant-marine program could put Cramp's back in business. In mid-1939 one Philadelphia paper screamed: "6,000 Jobs [in Cramp's] If City Acts." But the City Council, suspicious of a stock-selling scheme, refused to give up a $1,312,000 tax claim...
...fifth attempt succeeded. Reason: the U. S. Navy. After scared Congressmen began appropriating for a two-ocean fleet this summer, Secretary Frank Knox wrote Philadelphia's supercautious Mayor Robert Eneas Lamberton: "The Navy is desirous of having Cramp's reopened at the earliest possible time." With every other U. S. ocean shipyard strained to practical capacity, the idleness of Cramp's six ways, huge gantries, echoing shops and foundries could not continue...
With Navy support, the chief owners of Cramp's-Harriman interests, holders of over 90% of the mortgages-got under way. Tall, blue-eyed, soft-spoken Banker Joseph Pierce Ripley of Harriman, Ripley & Co. settled with skeptical councilmen for $100,000. The Navy settled a $1,000,000 financing lien for another $100,000. Ripley announced a plan whereby the mortgages ($5,338,000, including interest) will be exchanged for about 100,000 shares of common stock in a new Cramp's Shipbuilding Co. Another 100,000 shares will be publicly sold to raise...
This week, at a quiet sheriff's sale in Philadelphia where the new company was the only bidder, the oldest shipyard in America changed hands. With many a minor financial detail yet to be unraveled, the clangor of riveting tools on the Delaware was still weeks away. But Cramp's already had a firm Navy promise for $100,000,000 in orders for cruisers...