ECONOMICS OF THE AMERICA
When the Navy last week conscripted the luxury liner America, it left the venerable U.S. Lines without a single passenger ship. But at the company's offices in lower Manhattan there was no mourning. The atmosphere was more like a carnival. Everyone got a 10% bonus (based on last year's pay). Passenger department clerks were told they would be kept on. After work there was a rush to nearby bars.
The loss of its vessels has been a god-send to U.S Lines. Over 80% of its $3,801,180 net income in 1940 came from sale if its ships. The America, its No. 1 money-loser, was the climax. She was built to replace the old Leviathan, whose owners patted her poop whenever she lost less than $75,000 a trip. The America did a little better than that. But since her commissioning last summer she has lost something like $1,250,000.
Biggest boat ever built this side of the Atlantic, the America cost $17,586,478. Of this, U.S. Lines put up $2,396,629 cash, the Leviathan (valued at around $2,000,000), and a mortgage for $7,328,140, the Maritime Commission the rest. But even after throwing out the Government's ante, the America cost U.S. Lines $850,000 annually in depreciation ($600,000) and interest ($250,000). And that was without even moving her from the dock.
Barred from the Atlantic run for which she was designed, the America spent her brief commercial life in the cruise business, mostly in the Caribbean. She could carry 1,202 passengers, needed a crew of 643. But she never was entirely full, an average $170 per passenger, each twelve-day cruise yielded about $76,500. Against this were operating costs of $90,000 (wages, food, fuel, general overhead at $7,500 daily, plus depreciation and interest of $28,200 ($2,350 daily). Result: net loss of $41,700 a trip. The loss to U.S. Lines was less than that. Under the Bailey-Bland (ship relief) Act of 1940, most of its losses will be paid by the Government.
This week not even U.S. Lines knew what the Navy would pay for their pet ship. But one thing they did know: in ships, bigness does not beget profits.
Another article about the Naval acquisition in the same magazine.
Requisition
West from the Virgin Islands toward Haiti stood S.S. America, a thwarted ship in a restricted ocean. Biggest (27,000 gross tons) and fanciest merchantman ever to slide down a U.S. way, she had been conceived by the Maritime Commission for the blue-ribbon North Atlantic passenger trade. But before her birth was complete, World War II and the Neutrality Act closed in her horizons. Since she left her fitting-out dock ten months ago, her life has been a pleasant tedium of Caribbean cruises. Last week adventure crooked an imperious finger to this immaculate loafer of the Antilles. She was drafted into the U.S. Navy.
The summons came in a radiogram from the Navy to her master, young Captain Giles Chester Stedman of U.S. Lines, who is also commander in the Naval Reserve. He was ordered to cut short the cruise, cancel the stop at Port-au-Prince, cut the stop at Havana from 48 hours to one (presumably to let former King Carol of Rumania and Playmate Lupescu disembark), put in at Newport News, Va. for refitting. The spume under America's forefoot widened and whitened as she picked up her feet and shook herself out of her cruise pace. On radio and telephone Giles Stedman and U.S. Lines got he Navy to agree to let him fropo his 250 passengers at New York, promised to have his beauty back in Newport News by Wednesday of this week. There workmen will pull out her luxury trappings, install three- and four-decker bunks in her cabins, paint her Navy grey, perhaps arm her with 5-in. guns for her new life as a transport. Built to carry 3,500 soldiers or marines.
In four days of the frist week of Franklin Roosevelt's unlimited emergency, 18 passenger liners and two modern freighters were drafted for Army and Navy. Grossing better than 200,000 tons, they included American President Lines' brand-new President Jackson and President Adams, its older trans-Pacific liners President Taft, President Pierce, President Coolidge, and President Cleveland. American Export Lines lost its new Explorer and Executor, just completed for the India trade. Moore-McCormack, which now has 15 ships in the armed services, gave up Mormacpenn and Mormacwren from South American run. Total of drafted passenger craft: better than 45,000 tons.
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