SS Faith was one of a fleet of concrete ships that proved a dead weight for US

WHEN metal proved scarce during World War I, the US government turned to building ships from concrete.

A postcard of SS Atlantus, which launched in 1918 but retired in 1920, ended up as a tourist attraction off Cape May, New Jersey.

WHEN war broke out in 1914, the demand for arms and ordnance caused a major shortage of steel around the world. So shipbuilders looked for an alternative.

San Francisco businessman William Leslie Comyn believed he had the solution — build ships of concrete.

It had been done before; the first concrete ships were built in the mid-19th century. But the English-born American Comyn commissioned what was then the biggest concrete ship ever built — the SS Faith. It was launched on March 14, 1918, a century ago today.

Since ancient times when shipping became vital for fishing, trade and war fleets, it was crucial to secure building materials to make those ships.

The ancient Phoenicians cut down vast swathes of the cedar forests that once covered what is today Lebanon to build their formidable shipping fleets. When the Spanish built their armada to take on England in the 16th century, the destruction of forests was so alarming that it spurred the Spanish to better manage their forest resources. At the beginning of the 19th century the English also had limited forest resources and British naval hero Horatio Nelson urged the government to plant forests of oak to make sure there was plenty of wood for warships.

Pictures of what was then the world's biggest concrete ship, SS Faith, being built in San Francisco in 1918.

But new shipbuilding materials were emerging. In Nelson’s time navies were already using copper cladding on the sides of their ships to protect them from worms that burrowed into the wood. By the 1830s iron was being used to make hulls more resistant to cannon fire and impervious to incendiary bombs.

At the end of the 19th century most navies and commercial ships were made of metal. But iron and steel were not the only materials used to make seagoing vessels strong.

French inventor Joseph-Louis Lambot improved on the kinds of cement available at the time, using steel bands or wire to reinforce it, creating ferro-cement and reinforced concrete.

In 1848 he successfully built and tested a small boat made out of the material, then exhibited it at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1855.

In the 1860s people were building canal barges out of concrete but it was not until metal shortages in WWI that people attempted to build ocean-going ships, the first of which was the Norwegian inventor Nicolay Fougner’s ship Namsenfjord, launched in 1917.

The American concrete ship SS Faith shortly after its launch in 1918.

The American concrete ship SS Faith shortly after its launch in 1918.

Comyn heard about Fougner’s experiment and hoped to sell the United States Shipping Board (USSB) on the idea of commissioning a concrete fleet. Concrete had several advantages over steel. The basic material (primarily lime, rock and sand) was much cheaper, it could be made without the need for a foundry to manufacture the components and would not rust. The disadvantages included higher labour costs and the weight making ships harder to push through the water.

When Comyn failed to convince the USSB he set up his own San Francisco Shipbuilding Company at Oakland, California, and in September 1917 work began on SS (steamship) Faith. It was an apt name, since Comyn was putting so much faith in its construction.

US president Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921).

It was launched on March 14, 1918. Its first months of operation were so successful that US president Woodrow Wilson commissioned 24 concrete ships as part of his Emergency Fleet Corporation to keep up with demands placed on shipping after the US entry into WWI in April 1917. Only 12 ships were built because the war ended before work had started on all of them. But those that were completed had a checkered history. The Faith was sold by Comyn to a shipping company and was retired after it cracked up during a storm in 1921. It ended up as a breakwater in Cuba.

The oil tanker SS Selma was launched on June 28, 1919, the same day the Versailles Treaty was signed, but only lasted until 1920 before crashing into a jetty in Mexico and ripping a hole in the hull that couldn’t be repaired. The ship was later taken to Texas and sunk off Pelican Island. During Prohibition, customs agents took confiscated alcohol to the wreck and smashed the bottles against the hull to destroy them.

The SS Atlantus, launched in December 1918, became famous for transporting troops back home from the war, and operated for two years before it too ended up on the scrap heap. In 1926 it was bought by Baltimore-based entrepreneur Colonel Jesse Rosenfeld who had it towed to Cape May in New Jersey to use as a ferry wharf. On its way it was hit by a storm, and ran aground. It became a tourist attraction, even featuring on postcards, and remains there today.

Originally published as SS Faith was one of a fleet of concrete ships that proved a dead weight for US