"First intermediate pressure starboard exhaust pipes of exhaust line to second intermediate pressure flange broken off. (Cannot be repaired.)"
"Starboard and port low pressure exhaust pipe damaged. (Cannot be repaired.)"
Naval officers are pleased to recall that every single one of these supposedly irreparable injuries was not only repaired, but speedily repaired. Patching and welding were the answer to the problem they presented. Both these valuable methods had never been employed in marine engineering, although they had been used by the railroads for some fifteen years. There are three methods; or, rather, three methods were employed: electric welding, oxyacetylene welding, and ordinary mechanical patching. After repairs were effected tests of the machinery were first made at the docks with the ships lashed to the piers, the propellers being driven at low speed. Later each vessel was taken to sea for vigorous trial tests, and everything was found to be perfectly satisfactory. Indeed, it has been asserted that several knots were added to the best speed that the Vaterland—renamed Leviathan—ever made.
Of course the crew of the Vaterland had spared no pains in fixing that great ship so that she could not be used; even so they had less to do than the engine forces of other craft, for the reason that the vessel was in extremely bad repair as she was. As a consequence, she was one of the German ships that were least mutilated. When repairs were completed and it was time for her trial trip, her commander, a young American naval officer, was ordered to test the big craft in every way, to utilize every pound of steam pressure, and to try her out to the limit. For, if there was anything wrong with the vessel, the navy wished to know it before she fared forth with troops on board.
The Leviathan stood the test. And to-day we all know what a great part she has played in carrying our soldiers to France. She is in fact, a far better boat than on her maiden trip, for our engineers were surprised to find how sloppily she had been built in certain respects.
In preparing her for sea the engineers found it necessary to overhaul, partially redesign and reconstruct many important parts of the Leviathan's engines. As in her case, the most serious typical damage was done by breaking the cylinders, valve-chests, circulating pumps, steam and exhaust units in main engines; dry-firing boilers, and thus melting the tubes and distorting furnaces, together with easily detectable instances of a minor character, such as cutting piston and connecting rods and stays with hack saws, smashing engine-room telegraph systems, and removing and destroying parts which the Germans believed could not be duplicated. Then there was sabotage well concealed: rod stays in boilers were broken off, but nuts were fastened on exposed surfaces for purposes of deception; threads of bolts were destroyed, the bolts being replaced with but one or two threads to hold them, and thus calculated to give way under pressure. Piles of shavings and inflammable material with cans of kerosene near suggested the intention to burn the vessels, intentions thwarted by our watchfulness, while the absence of explosives has been accounted for purely on the ground of the risk which the crews would have run in attempting to purchase explosive materials in the open market.
No great amount of damage was done to the furnishings or ordinary ship's fittings. Destructiveness was similar in character throughout all the vessels and involved only important parts of the propulsive mechanism or other operating machinery.
We have spoken of the investigation of the vessels by Shipping Board engineers. They were appointed by the board not only to make a survey, but to superintend repairs. The collector of the port of New York also named a board of engineers (railroad engineers) to investigate the damage done the German ships, and to recommend repairs through the agency of welding. The railroad men, after due study, believed that their art could be applied to as great advantage on ships as upon locomotives. The Shipping Board engineers recommended, on the other hand, the renewal of all badly damaged cylinders. The railroad engineers, on the other hand, set forth their opinion that all damaged cylinders could be reclaimed and made as good as new.
As a result of this difference of opinion, nothing was done until the larger German craft were turned over to the Navy Department to be fitted as transports, in July of 1917. It was then decided to use welding and patching on the vessels.
In no cases were the repairs to the propulsive machinery delayed beyond the time necessary to equip these ships as transports. Electric and acetylene welding is not a complicated art in the hands of skilled men; for patching a hole, or filling the cavity of a great crack in a cylinder, say by electric welding, may be compared to a similar operation in dental surgery.