Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1917 — Wooden Sailing Vessels of Type of 50 Years Ago are Being Built [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Wooden Sailing Vessels of Type of 50 Years Ago are Being Built

The great demand for ships growing out of the present war has brought ~wjwTHe~f shipyards, which are how running at full speed turning out wooden vessels, some of them steamers and some of them of the sailing types which cruised the seas 25 and 50 years ago. The picture shows a wooden vessel in course of construction at Essex, Mass., and one of the old shipbuilders of 50 years ago who is back at his job after years of inactivity. Essex was a great shipbuilding center in the old days, but the coming of the steel ships almost wrecked the industry there. Some of the old shipbuilders now at work are more than seventy years old, but are happy as schoolboys as they shave down the planks and fit -hem to the ships.