Fanning Fiasco

ARMY & NAVY

Principal requirements for the ancient ceremony of launching a naval vessel are a bunting-draped platform, a bottle of champagne, an attractive female somehow connected with the ship and a crowd of several hundred to cheer as the craft slips into the water.

None of these items had been forgotten last week by officials of United Shipyards, Inc. as they prepared to launch the 1,500-ton destroyer Fanning they were building at their Staten Island yard for the U. S. Navy at a cost of $4,000,000. When the morning chosen for the launching arrived, Miss Cora Arinna Marsh of New London, Conn., great-great-granddaughter of Lieut. Nathaniel Fanning, Revolutionary naval hero dressed in her smartest clothes, journeyed to a Manhattan pier and waited to be ferried to Staten Island on an official tug. At the same time more than 250 invited guests made their way to the shipyard, where they expected to cheer Miss Marsh as she proudly blurted out the name of her illustrious ancestor and splintered the champagne bottle against the grey steel prow.

At the appointed hour anxious company officials greeted Miss Marsh at the pier, expressed their regrets, told her there could be no launching, because 1,500 members of the Industrial Union of Marine & Shipbuilding Workers employed at the yard had most embarrassingly struck that morning, refusing either to work or go home before quitting time. They claimed their employers had failed to live up to the wage and working conditions sections of their contract. Back to New London went Miss Marsh.

Two days later the Navy, more interested in expediency than protocol, rushed Miss Marsh to the shipyard, had her send the Fanning down the ways in the teeth of last week's blinding gale. This time the official guests were inside the shipyard gates, the strikers outside.

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