Landlocked Shipbuilder

One thousand miles from the nearest seacoast, in a converted stove factory in landlocked Kokomo, Ind., Globe American Corp. is building lifeboats for the merchant marine. Its assembly line, which makes one 3,500-lb. boat every two hours, "launched" its 220th boat this week.

For 58 years Globe American had been building stoves and ranges. To tall, black-haired, New England-bred Alden Chester, vice president, defense work seemed more important. Last summer he decided that steel lifeboats could as easily be assembly-lined as stoves. Alden Chester hired a naval architect to look over minimum Government specifications, draw up blueprints. They were adopted by the Maritime Commission as standard equipment for the Liberty ships last Aug. 4, and Globe American got a $1,500,000 contract for 1,248 of them. Globe American started boat production on Dec. 1. As prime contractor, it "co-contracted" 200 boats to Neptune Supply Co. of New Orleans, 304 to Imperial Lifeboat & Davit Co. of New York, kept 744 for Kokomo.

Until Globe American submitted its plans, there was no standard U.S. lifeboat; until it began assembly-line production, lifeboats were built at small, coastal shipyards, usually of wood. Into each of Globe American's boats goes one and a half tons of sheet steel. Heavier than wood, less buoyant, air tanks and kapok nevertheless make Globe boats unsinkable.

Onto each U.S. Liberty ship go four 31-passenger Globe American lifeboats, one motor-equipped, all equipped with oars, red sails, water, food, signaling and first-aid equipment. Every day at Kokomo four fully equipped boats are put on a flatcar, shipped to Atlantic, Pacific or Gulf shipyards, there hoisted to the davits of a new U.S. cargo vessel. Day after Franklin Roosevelt announced his Victory Program, Alden Chester wired the Maritime Commission, offered to furnish all lifeboats and life rafts needed for the entire merchant-marine building program--without subcontracting.

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