Anchors to Windward

At the Ingalls Shipbuilding Corp. yard on the muddy "Singing River" at Pascagoula, Miss., where 11,000 men & women worked at 1943's hectic peak, only 8,000 worked this week. Within a year the last of the 73 big C-3 freighters for the United States Maritime Commission, and the special type craft for the Navy would be ready for delivery, and Ingalls' war work would be near its end. All this suited Ingalls Shipbuilding Corp. just fine.

The reason for their satisfaction at the end of war work was that shrewd, cantankerous Robert Ingersoll Ingalls, 62, had got a running start on peacetime business. From where he sat, he calculated that he could hold the number of workers at 8,000, and still keep the company operating at a profit on commercial contracts.

Bob Ingalls' anchors to windward: P: Two fat contracts: 1) to convert three cargo ships into passenger-cargo liners at $4 million each for postwar service to Scandinavia under the Moore & McCormick houseflag; 2) to build three de luxe passenger liners (cost $5 million each) for the Mississippi Shipping Company Inc.'s Delta Line, to sail from Gulf ports to the East Coast of South America. P:Son Robert, Jr. was in Brazil to drum up orders for new ships for the antique, but vital, Brazilian merchant marine. P: Smart and young, Ingalls' engineers were putting the finishing touches on designs for a new diesel-electric locomotive. Ingalls hopes to sell railroads 150 every postwar year.

Market for Steel. The depression put Ingalls into the shipbuilding business. In 1932 Ingalls was casting around for new outlets for the steel his Ingalls Iron Works Co. in Birmingham had been fabricating since 1910. One outlet, he decided, was a yard to build dredges and barges for coastal and river service. He built his own yard in Decatur, Ala.

When the Maritime Commission in 1937 set out to rejuvenate"the creaking U.S. Merchant Marine, Ingalls saw his chance to get into shipbuilding with a splash. In 1939 he formed the subsidiary Ingalls Shipbuilding Corp., and spent some $500,000 for a yard at Pascagoula. It was a good investment. He landed a $10 million contract for four C-3 type freighters. The first of the batch, the Exchequer for the American Export Lines, was the largest all-welded merchant ship ever built in the U.S. When war came Pascagoula got all the business it could handle.

And Still Another? For many years after the war, Bob Ingalls devoutly believes, his yard will be busy. The diesel-electric locomotive orders should take up the slack between ship contracts. Last week shipping circles buzzed with a rumor of still another project. The rumor: after the war Ingalls will build a fleet of fast ships, operate them under his own house-flag carrying fruits and vegetables from West Coast ports to Europe.

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