Aluminum for Shipbuilding

The annual report of the British Aluminum Association, recently printed in the London Times, among other things says: A good deal has been said with regard to the injurious action of sea water on aluminum, but the board knew by long experience that aluminum did not deteriorate in salt water to the extent that had been alleged. The yacht Defender, which won the last international race, was built very largely of aluminum, and, after four and one-half years, she was found to have deteriorated so little that very few repairs were necessary to put her into condition to compete with the Columbia at the recent trials. Torpedo boats and other ships, moreover, had been built in France partly of aluminum. As aluminum was only one-third the weight of copper, it was apparent that about one-half the quantity of aluminum gave a corresponding amount of electrical conductivity to that given by copper. Lord Kelvin said that in the fittings of ships aluminum had proved valuable, convenient and of great practical utility. As to the actual construction of ships with aluminum, that was a matter which would have to be settled by the experience of engineers. He did not believe that the question of the efficiency of protecting aluminum by paint had yet been gone into sufficiently. If they compared an unprotected aluminum plate with steel or iron, he thought that it would be found that the former did not rust away so quickly as the latter.