Word: otters
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Baranov intended to stay five years in the Northwest, long enough to make money out of trading in sea otter furs. He stayed...
Quickly built, the Otter had her first trials. "Very satisfactory," chuffed Secretary Knox. People began to believe that whole shoals of Sea Otters would shortly squirt out of U.S. shipyards, start bobbing across the Atlantic in schools. But nothing happened. Two months ago Mr. Knox finally admitted the idea was dead...
This was the signal for a more than routine uproar. Columnists, Congressmen and Otter-lovers wanted to know why. A Senate investigating committee took a look, trumpeted: the vessel had not had a full and fair trial; Navy and Maritime Commission officials (Powell, Rear Admiral Emory Land) had been hostile to the sponsors and their idea; obstacles had been deliberately put in the way. Mrs. Walter Lippmann and her good friend Eleanor Roosevelt carried on a vigorous backstage campaign. Mrs. Lippmann's husband thundered that the Maritime Commission was waterlogged with ancient prejudices. "What happened to the Sea Otter...
...Flaming Coffins." What had happened to the Sea Otter'? Navy and Maritime Commission men, British agents had attended her trials. But their reports were not made public. This was the main reason that the Sea Otter became an "affair." For more than a week, a lengthy press release on the subject had lain unreleased on the desk of glum Mr. Knox. Said Mr. Powell ruefully: "I thought this Sea Otter thing was too small and unimportant to bother about after we had made our decision." The decision: thumbs down. Some of the reasons, from official files...
...mile wind and five-foot waves, the little Otter had rolled as much as 38 degrees-enough to convince passengers, clinging desperately to handholds, that only tough, trained "destroyer crews" could ever sail in her, and then only under compulsion. Almost twice as many men would be required to operate her, per ton of cargo carried, as a conventional merchantman...