Sent to: [email protected] , 08 Sept. 2008 Cc: [email protected] President ABS, [email protected] President Gibbs & Cox [email protected] President Bureau Veritas

Open letter to Gus Bourneuf Jr., author of the: “Workhorse of the Fleet” a History of the Liberty Ship. From: Ion Livas B.Sc., Naval Architect & Marine Engineer, M.SNAME. Author of: “THE SHIPOWNER”. Editor of “THE HISTORY OF MODERN SHIPPING”: www.modernshiphistory.com

Dear Gus, I enjoyed reading the “Workhorse of the Fleet”, as I was very closely related to the Liberty Ship in the 50’s and the 60’s. There is still an untold story though about the Liberty Ship, that should not be forgotten. Of the 1,200 or so Liberties sold to the Merchant Marine, there were 54 that were lengthened in the 1950s and 1960s, by the addition of a fourth hold forward of the Bridge. Of these, 24 were under US Flag and the remaining 30, mostly Greek owned, under Liberian and Panamanian Flags.

The Liberty ship was built as a flush-decker, without a Fo’csle, an enclosed Bridge or an enclosed Poop, thus ‘living’ with the flush-decker freeboard penalty even after she was lengthened.

This very closely guarded ‘secret’ was kept until 1963. It was only revealed when Des Mann thought of putting a Fo’csle on a Lengthened Liberty Ship.

When Des Mann showed me the quotation he got from a Japanese Yard, for my comments, it came to me like a flash. Why put an expensive Fo’csle on the ship, with all that that entailed; relocating the windlass, extending the piping, raising the chain locker etc?

Why not enclose the Bridge instead? According to the Load Line Regulations, enclosing the Bridge eliminated the flush-decker freeboard penalty. The ship would now have an increased draft that would permit an additional 640 tons of cargo to be carried. Furthermore the cost would be minuscule compared to the $150,000 that had been quoted for the addition of a Fo’csle by the Japanese. I walked over to ABS in New York, with my drawings and my calculations and proposed my idea to Bannerman and Bill Hannan. They both confirmed that enclosing the Bridge of the Lengthened Liberty ship was acceptable.

Des Mann had five US Flag Lengthened Liberty ships. Their Bridge Enclosure work was awarded to Todd shipyards in Galveston Texas, where Ralph Anselmi, was the Manager at the time. The six watertight doors (four fore and aft and two for access to the Accommodation ladders), plus the ten brass ‘port-holes’ that were needed (5 either side), were salvaged from scrapped Liberty ships. For only $25,000 each, the five ships increased their Deadweight by 640 tons, to 12,240 tons! It is worthy of note, that the freight rate for grain to India – the main business for US flag ships at the time - was then $110 per ton. Enclosing the Bridge proved to be a very profitable and cheap conversion. The grape vine did not take long to spread the good news and in less than three months, working out of Shipdesign Inc., my New York office, I had converted the other 19 US flag ships as well, mainly at Todd’s, in Galveston Texas and Portland Oregon.

The cost of Enclosing the Bridge on foreign Flag ships outside the US, was about half of the cost in a US shipyard. Even here the result was very profitable, as the corresponding freight rate for non US flag business was $25 per ton at the time. The Bridge enclosure cost was paid off here again, during the very first loaded voyage. Shipdesign Inc. was directly involved with enclosing the Bridge of each of the 29 of the 30 non-US flag Lengthened Liberty ships, by the middle of 1964. The most noteworthy development of the Liberty Ship Bridge Enclosure, took place when I requested ABS to approve the enclosure of the Bridge of ordinary Liberty ships as well. That would give each ship an additional 580 tons of carrying capacity.

I am now quoting from paragraph 2, page 56 of your book : “Workhorse of the Fleet”. “After careful study, ABS discovered that the scantlings specified were more than adequate for the design draft, which in fact could have been deeper.” There was therefore, no technical reason for ABS to turn me down. But Bannerman, the head of ABS in New York, at the time, did. It was because of ‘economic politics’, he told me. “Can you imagine the claims that we might have, for not coming up with your idea many years ago? Owners of more than one thousand Liberties, will be asking for monumental lost revenues,” he added. “Would it not be better to tackle the problem now?” I replied, “rather than risk exacerbating it with the passage of time, now that the ‘secret’ is out?” I had still not perceived at the time, that such approval would have shown up the original design flaw that was involved.

When the US Coast Guard Admiral in Washington, to whom I had gone to try to override Bannerman, turned me down as well, I went to Bureau Veritas and John Erbie. After a couple of days, John Erbie got the OK from Paris. My first candidate was my old school mate, Nick Pateras. He had one Liberty ship, the ‘Capetan Costas’. The Bridge enclosure work was carried out in Rijeka, in the then Yugoslavia, in May 1964. Seven days after entering the shipyard and at a cost of only $12,000, the ‘Capetan Costas’, now re-classed with BV, would be the first standard Liberty ship ever to top 11,420 tons Deadweight. Apart from being a useful conversion financially, the enclosed Bridge, now sporting brass ‘port-holes’ and the flared fore and aft bridge fashion-plates, gave the old “Ugly Duckling” a touch of beauty that ‘she’ never had before, as is shown in the attached ‘photograph’ and drawing.

After enclosing the bridge of the ‘Capetan Costas’, I went back to Bannerman, with calculations, drawings & photographs, to try to persuade him to let bygones be bygones and allow the enclosure of the Bridge of ordinary Liberty ships. If BV could do it, why not ABS? I still held hopes that after consulting with Gibbs & Cox, MARAD and the Coast Guard, ABS would have resolved to allow Liberty Ship owners to upgrade their ships, by those very welcome extra 580 tons. But this was not to be.

When one thinks of it seriously though, it is surprising that someone at ABS, Gibbs & Cox or the Maritime Commission, did not come up with the simple idea of having the Bridge enclosed in the original design of the Liberty ship. Enclosing the Bridge of the Original Liberty Ship, would have increased the carrying capacity of the 2,751 ships built, by over 1,600,000 tons – equivalent to 140 more ships for the war effort, almost for free.

With best wishes, Ion Ion Livas B.Sc. Naval Architect & Marine Engineer [email protected] Mob.: +30-6941-58-65-52, 86 Filonos St., 18536 Piraeus, Greece

Note: In 1957, Ion Livas forecast the coming of the 500,000 ton Tanker – Newcastle University, ‘Financial Times’.

Sponsored by Todd’s Shipyards, Ion Livas researched the effect of the Bulbous Bow on Cargo ships, in Japan, the Paris, the Madrid and the Stephenson Ship Model Testing Tanks - 1964 onwards. There is hardly a ship built these days without a Bulbous Bow.

WORKHORSE OF THE FLEET – LSBE 080908