Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department. This approval means that the officer concerned is able to furnish west-bound passage on commercial line provided government transportation is not available and agrees to his family remaining overseas six months; and that in the case of. persons other than wife and children the officer or man concerned has submitted a certificate to the effect that the person for whom transportation is asked is a permanent member of his immediate family, habitually resides with him and has no other home. This is required by the law and no transportation can be furnished unless such a certificate is made.

Upon receiving this approval the Bureau of Navigation will endeavor to arrange government transportation to suit the convenience of families concerned. It is most important that the person concerned make request to the bureau for this transportation, advising the bureau of the address, the name, and relationship of all persons composing the family, and in the case of children their ages and date they will be ready for transportation. Communications regarding transportation should be addressed direct to the Bureau of Navigation.

For the present and until the service at large has had time to receive the prescribed conditions, the Bureau of Navigation will undertake to get a cable to the officer concerned upon receiving request from his wife.

Where the above procedure is not followed it is probable that delay will result.-U. S. Official Bulletin, 6/16.

SUPPLY CORPS OF THE U. S. NAVY.-The Naval Appropriations Act for 1920 contains a provision changing the name of the Pay Corps of the navy to Supply Corps. This is in line with the General Order issued in 1915 which changed the title of the pay officer of a ship to supply officer and of the general storekeeper and general storekeeper's department at a navy yard to supply officer and supply department, respectively. When the Pay Corps was established practically the only duty imposed upon its officers was the disbursement of money and, consequently, the title of the corps indicated exactly its duties. Gradually, however, new duties and responsibilities were added until to-day the work handled by the officers of the Supply Corps is very diversified, embracing several distinct specialties as follows:

Financial and monetary administration, general supply, transportation, contractural and purchasing, disbursing of money, commissary, cost accounting, military, general executive and administrative. An officer of the Supply Corps is also required to have some knowledge of legal matters. While the financial duties of an officer of the Supply Corps are of course most important, money is after all but one of the many kinds of supplies that he has to furnish and it is in fact the easiest to procure, handle and account for. The work of obtaining provisions and administering the commissary department in general is an equally important part of the professional duties of a supply officer as well as obtaining, issuing and accounting therefor, clothing and small stores for the enlisted men and the thousands of articles of ship's equipment and consumable supplies required.

The name Supply Corps, therefore, more adequately describes the duties performed by its members, and the change will be most welcome to those who have charge of supplying the navy with everything it needs and who did so in such a notably efficient manner during the war with Germany.Army and Navy Journal, 7/12.

CHANGES IN NAVY OFFICERS' UNIFORMS.-In a general order dated June 12, 1919, and approved by Secretary of the Navy Daniels on June 14, it is announced that the Uniform Regulations of the U. S. Navy are amended so as to eliminate eight uniforms from among those heretofore prescribed for commissioned officers, as well as a number of articles of equipment for uniform. The ordinary service uniform during the war

was found to meet the requirements of formal and informal occasions, and will be all that will henceforth be required, Secretary Daniels believes. This," he said, "will effect economy, both to the officer and in space on shipboard and facilitate ease in traveling from one station to another. It will result in a great saving to the officers of the service in the future, as they are required to purchase all articles of uniform at their own expense." The general order follows:

Subject: Uniform.

G. O. 477, June 12, 1919, Navy Dept.

1. The following garments and articles of equipment of officers' uniform are hereby discontinued:

Special full dress coat

Mess jacket

Full dress trousers

Mess trousers

Cocked hat

Epaulets

Full dress belt

2. The following prescribed uniforms set forth in Chapter 3 of Uniform Regulations are abolished:

Special full dress

White special full dress

Full dress

White full dress

Dress

Evening full dress

Dinner dress

Mess dress

3. For the present there will remain the following uniforms:

Undress. (As specified in Chapter 3 of Uniform Regulations. When medals and badges are worn this uniform will be designated "dress.") Service dress. (Ribbons of medals and badges to be worn.)

White service dress. (Ribbons of medals and badges to be worn.)
Evening dress.

4. Until further orders only the service dress and white dress will be worn.-Army and Navy Journal, 6/21.

MERCHANT MARINE

HOG ISLAND VINDICATED.-The Hog Island shipyard, planned and constructed during the war's darkest period to defeat the German menace by building ships faster than the U-boats could sink them, had not delivered one completed vessel when the armistice was signed, and the original estimate of $21,000,000 as the cost of the plant had been more than trebled by January 1, 1919. For a time, moreover, public confidence in this colossal enterprise was shaken, and charges of inefficiency, profiteering, and prodigal extravagance were hurled against its management. But now that the crisis which called it into being has passed, the greatest shipyard in the world seems to be getting its vindication, and bouquets are replacing brickbats in the news and editorial columns of the daily press. The Philadelphia North American, which for a long time maintained a doubting attitude toward this enterprise, now affirms that "the manner in which America uses the opportunity provided at Hog Island shipyard will be a test of her ability to hold her own in the trade of the world and will show to what extent she has the qualities of a great, progressive nation."

In his testimony before Senator Fletcher's committee in January, Mr. Brush said:

"I have no hesitancy in stating to you as a positive fact that there do not exist at any commercial port in the United States any better equipped storage yards and storage houses or piers for commercial purposes. At no other commercial piers in the United States does there exist to-day 50 per

cent of the modern appliances for the handling of cargo and the quick dispatch of vessels with economy and speed that are at this minute available and in actual operation at Hog Island.

"I believe that Hog Island is the one war-venture where every single penny spent by the government can be recovered."

But at the present moment, with the United States rapidly recovering her old place on the seven seas, it is as a ship-building proposition that Hog Island chiefly interests the American people. "Never again will the United States be guilty of the folly of trusting its foreign commerce to foreign bottoms," declares Secretary of the Navy Daniels, predicting the rebirth of the American merchant marine. What part in this rebirth is to be played by Hog Island with its " quantity production" of fabricated ships? Quantity production is a specialty with us," remarks the Philadelphia Record, "and there never was a more significant example of it than in the greatest shipyard of the world, where the first keel was laid in less than five months from the beginning of the work on the yard, and the first launching in less than ten months, and where fifty large steamers can be built at once." On Memorial Day five 7800-ton cargo ships were launched at Hog Island, putting the Delaware ahead of the Clyde and the Tyne as the foremost cradle of great ships. The regular output at present is at least one ship a week, and for these ships the government finds a ready market at current prices. Nineteen of the twenty-nine ships from this yard turned over to the government before the end of May had at that date covered approximately 100,000 miles on voyages from this country to ports in South America, England, France, Italy, Turkey, and Germany, and all, we are told, have proved the seaworthiness of the fabricated ship. Reviewing briefly the story of this shipyard, the Manufacturers' Record of Baltimore says:

From a disconsolate waste, largely covered with underbrush, and much of it an apparently impassable marsh, there has been created the greatest shipyard in the world, which is larger than the Cramps, the Fore River, the Maryland Steel, the Newport News, the New York Ship-building, and the Union Iron Works yards, all combined, were at the outbreak of the war. This almost incredible piece of construction work has been brought about within the brief space of fifteen months, for the first contract was signed on September 13, 1917.

"The magnitude of the work accomplished can be understood from the single statement that since the beginning of the clearing of the land and the redemption of a swamp an average of 26,000 men have been employed, with a weekly pay-roll of $600,000."-The Literary Digest, 6/21.

SHIPBUILDING OUTPUT FOR 1919.-During the month of May 250 vessels, of 395,408 gross tons, were built in American shipyards and officially numbered by the Bureau of Navigation, Department of Commerce. The monthly output for 1919 has been as follows:

Months

Steel

Seagoing
wood

Total

Nonseagoing Grand total

1919

Num- Gross Num- Gross Num- Gross Num Gross Num- Gross ber tonnage ber tonnage ber tonnage ber tonnage ber tonnage

a. Includes three concrete vessels of 1,004 gross tons.

b. Includes two concrete vessels

of 588 gross tons. c. Includes one concrete vessel of 2,481 gross tons.

The ships built and officially numbered during the twelve months ended May 31, 1919, totaled 2157, with a gross tonnage of 3,639,020. The following shows the output for twelve-month period beginning with May, 1918:

MORE THAN 350 AMERICAN VESSELS ENGAGED IN FOREIGN COMMERCE Now SAILING FROM ATLANTIC SEAPORTS.-The big part the American Merchant Marine is playing in the promotion of trade is indicated by the vast number of ships plying the various trade routes from Atlantic ports carrying American goods to all parts of the world in American bottoms.

Out of four Atlantic ports alone 1,172,704 deadweight tons of shipping, embracing 221 ships, are now employed in spreading the fruits of American ingenuity and commercial enterprise.

To the west coast of South America six of these ships totaling 23,295 deadweight tonnage now regularly sail. Nine of the ships from these ports leave at stated intervals for China and Japan, representing a deadweight tonnage of 74,596.

Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and Africa we are in direct communication with through these four ports. Six steamers of total deadweight tonnage 42,590 are employed carrying cargoes from and to those countries.

In the trans-Atlantic, Mediterranean and South Europe trade there are 13 of the ships employed of 91,120 total deadweight tonnage.

One hundred ships are plying from these four ports north of Baltimore to the West Indies and Caribbean trades, totaling 319,592 deadweight ton

nage.

There are 24 ships sailing out of these four Atlantic ports employed in carrying on trade relations between the east coast of South America and this country. The total tonnage of these vessels is 166,082 deadweight.

Five ships of 37,429 deadweight tonnage are now sailing_from_these four American ports in the trade routes of Levant, Indian, Ocean-Straits Settlement and the Dutch East Indies.

Engaged in the trade routes of the Trans-Atlantic and Northern Europe there are 50 ships sailing from these four Atlantic ports with a total deadweight tonnage of 373,146.

The four Atlantic ports from whence all the above tonnage moves are Boston, New York, Wilmington, N. C., and Philadelphia.

Sailing from ports south of Baltimore, including that port, are 161 vessels with a total tonnage deadweight of 697,807.