The New Fleet

With a sweep of a pen, American President Lines, biggest West Coast shipper, contracted with the U.S. Maritime Board last week for the complete replacement of a merchant fleet. Over the next ten years American President will retire all its 19 ships, including the 981-passenger President Cleveland, and its sistership the President Wilson, replace them with 18 to 20 new ships. Total cost of the program: $225 million, of which the U.S. Government will pay $90 million, American President Lines the balance.

It was the biggest deal ever signed by a U.S. shipper, and Federal Maritime Administrator Louis S. Rothschild hopes that it will be a pattern for other U.S. lines, and a big step towards leveling out the feast-or-famine conditions that have plagued American shipbuilders.

The four passenger-cargo ships to be built under the new program will have a radical look. Among the proposals: a freightliner, with all cargo forward, all decks and staterooms aft; a multidecked patio around the swimming pool to give inside staterooms an outside view; a picture-windowed cocktail lounge perched aloft in the streamlined main stack. Each ship will carry at least 100 passengers and have space for 500,000 cu. ft. of cargo, and will be plying American President's round-the-world trade routes by 1960.

The Maritime Board and American President had been working on the deal for several years, came to terms last summer on the first step--replacing eight ships at a cost of $65.8 million (TIME, Aug. 9). But each saw a farther horizon. The board wanted the whole fleet modernized while American President was more immediately interested in getting a Government subsidy for operating over Trade Route 17 (Atlantic Coast through the Panama Canal to Malaya and Indonesia). Finally a bargain was struck. If American President would agree to replace its entire fleet over a ten-year period, the Maritime Board would subsidize American President's operations on Route 17.

Under the new program American President has already bought" and is converting four Mariner-class freighters, will put them into round-the-world service by summer. The timetable for additional orders: four passenger-cargo ships by July 1956, four to five new freighters for delivery by 1962, four to five more freighters for delivery by 1964, replace the Cleveland in 1964, the Wilson in 1965. Said President's President George Killion: "For years we've been forced to use war-built ships on routes for which they were not designed. But now American President is going to have a tailor-made ship for every route it serves."

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