Well in those days welding was in its infancy. They'd just
started electric welding, all the hull and the frames and the
bulkheads were of steel and riveted. This was a laborious job,
there was a lot of drilling and caulking and the riveters hammering
away, but they were an efficient strong ship. With the modern
welding, ah the techniques improving but they were getting lots of
cracks and distortion in the hull. I mean, you look at a modern
ship being the QE 2 where the welding is all the hull plates were
distorted, and there's never the finish on them like the old
riveted job. When the plates were riveted on the hull, they were
bent and shaped and put up in position, then the driller would
drill all the holes in there and then the riveters have to come
along and rivet them up, and then the caulkers would come along and
caulk up all the edges of the seams. Where the two plates were
riveted together, the lap of one plate to the other, they'd caulk,
it’s a pneumatic machine would hammer the metal in to make a seal
on the join. It was very very noisy.
Question: And then what happened after the caulking?
Well, that was it. Then they ... it would have to be sanded off
and painted prior for launching.
