The Campania, converted as we have seen into a sea-plane carrier, was refitted in 1916, a thorough overhaul being carried out, including the fitting of a new crank shaft, and the examination of, and repairs to, her hull and engines. In 1917, H.M.S. Scotia, the well-known Holyhead mail boat of the London and North Western Railway, was reconditioned, after having been in Admiralty employment, and all necessary repairs carried out in respect of her hull and engines. H.M.S. Berwick was also partially refitted in the same year. No less than 3,200 Plunger control valve keys and retarding rams for 12-pound and naval guns were made at the Company’s works; and a large amount of work was also undertaken in connection with the fitting of submarines and mines.
This included, as regarded submarines, the provision of 520 Oilers for exhaust valve boxes, 40 tail-end shafts, 20 complete thrust blocks, and the machining and complete fitting of four tail-end intermediate shafts. At the same time 456 save-alls for oil fuel were designed and provided—the pattern of these save-alls being afterwards adopted as the standard pattern for the Navy. Nineteen thousand, eight hundred manganese bronze spindles for mines were turned out, as well as 1,000 mine mechanism plates. When the Admiralty decided to fit naval and merchant ships with the paravane contrivance, as a protection against mines, the Cunard Company manufactured for them 5,728 sets of wires for this gear. All this work was, of course, carried out in addition to the ordinary routine of overhauling the Company’s own fleet.
This sort of work, however, valuable as it was, was perhaps only to be expected of a large marine Company, so efficiently organised for many years as the Cunard Company had been. But in addition, a large amount of work was done for the armies in the Company’s workshops, much of which required the highest degree of accuracy and extremely skilled workmanship. One of the most important of such contracts was the assembling of the 9·2 American Howitzer Equipment. These enormous guns were shipped from the United States in parts, and the work of completing, assembling, carrying out modifications in design, and getting them ready for use in France, was done entirely in the Cunard Works. Eighty-four of these equipments were dealt with, and, in addition, 100 carriages and limbers and brake gear, which were a part and parcel of the equipment, were manufactured. Owing to the fact that the firing beams, which were received from the United States, were found in practice to be insufficiently strong, the Company undertook the stripping and re-inforcing of 73 sets of these.
One of the rooms in the Cunard Shell Works
A Record of “striking” value
In the critical month of March, 1918, when the Allied armies were retreating on the Western Front, and it was clear that the crucial point of the war was imminent, the Ministry of Munitions sent out urgent appeals to all Munition Works. During the great retreat, although many of the actual guns were saved, there was no time to attempt to bring away the gun beds, and in consequence many of the larger calibre weapons were thus rendered useless. The Cunard Company was then asked to undertake to supply one hundred sets in as short a time as possible. Realising the urgency of the position, the Company succeeded in engaging the assistance of several outside firms, who carried out part of the work under Cunard supervision, with the amazing result that no less than 146 sets were finished and delivered complete within a fortnight.
But for the unremitting attention of the Company’s officials and the high degree of organisation that had been attained, such a result would, of course, have been wholly impossible. The separate items manufactured by outside firms were all received and distributed from the Company’s Gun Department a special chart of progress being kept for the purpose. For this great achievement the Company received a special letter of congratulation from the Ministry of Munitions, which in their turn they passed on to their men, who had so magnificently responded to the calls of their country in the crisis, and also to the firms who had rendered such able assistance.
Another very large contract, carried out by the Cunard Company, was the manufacture of artillery wheels. This work was distributed between the Company’s various establishments, the metal work being done by the Cunard’s Engine Works, and the wood work at the Furnishing Departments in Liverpool and London; in order to provide the necessary material, the Company’s timber experts had to make enormous purchases, not only having to buy complete cargoes, but in many instances, having to buy the timber before the trees were felled, and it cannot be denied that the Government was extremely fortunate in having the advantage of their great experience and wise advice. The metal parts provided consisted of pipe boxes, nots and naves, all of these being made of manganese bronze as required by the War Office, and the tyres—the wooden parts of the wheels being the spokes and felloes. Eleven hundred complete artillery wheels were thus made, as well as 1,400 sand tyres—a sand tyre being a contrivance fitted to the rim of the gun wheel in order to prevent it sinking into mud or sand. The reconstruction of damaged wheels was undertaken for the War Office by the Cunard Company’s London works and more than 8,000 wheels were dealt with in this manner.