Lord Pirrie, the Controller-General of Merchant Shipbuilding, said on Friday
week that a visit to the yards on the North-Eas1
Coast had given him encouragement. The yards were being enlarged rapidly and the men were working well. In the past six months the shipyards, with an increase of only eight per cent. in the labour employed, had produced thirty-six per cent. more new Shipping. Machinery ordered for the National Shipyards, and the fabricated parts of the first eleven hulls which were to be built there, had been transferred to private yards as the National Yards were still far from complete. New ships were being finished more quickly. The large increase in the work of repairing damaged ships accounted in part for the seemingly small output of new shipping. The Admiralty was releasing many men from naval construction so as to add to the Merchant Marine. Lord Pirrie said that the figures of entrances into and clearances from British ports, which increased by twenty-two per cent. between January and July, showed the very real improvement which had been effected by the Shipping Controller and the shipyards, although in the seven months ending with July we lost 594,143 gross tons of shipping more than we built.
