Last Saturday a reinforced concrete sea-going barge of a thousand
tons was launched at Poole, and we hope that she may be the first of many such vessels. Sixteen slip-ways are nearly completed at Poole, designed for the construction of ships up to 2,500 tons dead weight-carrying capacity. It is, of course, an old idea to use reinforced concrete for shipbuilding. The main objection to it has always been that as concrete has not the resiliency of metal the strain on concrete ships from the working of engines and the batter. ing of the seas would be too heavy. Experience does not seem to have borne out this objection. So far as we know, the few reinforced concrete vessels that have been built in the past generation have been successful, and the concrete ships recently built in the United States are said to have been notably successful. One great advan- tage of the use of concrete in war-time is that vessels can be built very rapidly. The fine ribs of steel which reinforce the concrete do give a certain resiliency. It is the power to bend without cracking which steel ribs confer on concrete that makes reinforced concrete so valuable a material for building houses in countries where earthquakes are common. Anyone who visited Messina after the great earthquake must have been struck by the spectacle of a few reinforced concrete buildings standing up amid the appalling ruin of rubble.
Previous page
