Word: vessel
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...point. The rules and regulations surrounding the contract for a single naval vessel are so byzantine that a truthful U.S. Navy should name a frigate the U.S.S. Franz Kafka. In order to soothe congressional critics, the Navy often insists on an unrealistically low price in the initial contract. Then the specifications for ships and equipment are changed sometimes hundreds of times, causing delays and costly modifications. Navy-supplied weaponry often arrives late, and payments frequently run behind schedule. The amount of paper work involved in shipbuilding is mountainous. Litton has assembled 1½ tons of documentation, made up largely...
...longest of the tall ships is the 375-ft. Russian bark Kruzenshtern, built in 1926 and, like most of the others, used as a training ship for naval cadets. The oldest is the American barkentine Gazela Primeiro, built in 1883 as a fishing vessel and now owned by the Philadelphia Maritime Museum. While most of the tall ships are being manned by male cadets, the smaller topsail schooner Sir Winston Churchill, owned by England's Sail Training Association, is carrying 42 female sail trainees. In their massed splendor, the ships suggest another Masefield image: "They mark our passage...
...would this machine actually work? The inventor could find out only by risking his own life inside it. One moonlit night last summer, Bushnell and his younger brother Ezra stealthily took the Turtle out into Long Island Sound for its maiden cruise. Squeezing himself through the hatch (the oaken vessel is only 7½ feet high), Bushnell seated himself on a horizontal beam, seized the tiller with one arm, let in water through a valve at his feet and slowly sank beneath the surface. He then maneuvered the ship forward by turning a crank that spins a two-bladed propeller...
Benjamin Franklin inspected the Turtle in Bushnell's workshop and praised it to General Washington, who later described it as "an effort of genius." But Bushnell has been having trouble with the vessel: the pump broke down and had to be replaced; the ventilator had to be altered to draw in fresh air through one tube and eject stale air through another. To help out, the Connecticut Council of Safety decided last February to award Bushnell £60 to carry on his work...
...last week, the whereabouts of the Turtle was being kept secret, for although the British know of the vessel's existence, they do not know where or when it might strike. Asked Connecticut Congressional Delegate William Williams impatiently: "Where is Bushnell? Why don't he attempt something? When will or can be a more proper time than is or has been?" The answers might well become clear when General William Howe's brother, Admiral Richard Howe, arrives in New York with a reinforcing fleet later this month (see THE NATION). What could be a better target for the Turtle than...