Another obstacle in the way of carrying out the Service’s demobilization plan swiftly and efficiently was the congested condition of the American shipyards, practically all of which were engaged to the limits of their capacities in new construction for the Emergency Fleet Corporation. This congestion not only hampered the project to convert the cargo vessels into troop carriers, but it also strung out the necessary work of overhauling the regular troop transports already in commission. For over a year these vessels had been driven mercilessly through fair weather and foul, with never a let-up for the general repairing and reconditioning which every ship needs at intervals. Large forces had been carried on all of them as part of the crews to keep the vessels going somehow by making emergency repairs whenever needed. Only conditions as they existed before the armistice warranted such abuse. The armistice occurred opportunely for most of these vessels, and particularly for the ex-German liners. War or no war, they had about reached the point where they had to be drydocked, regardless of the effect upon the overseas movement. After the armistice it would have been folly to set this tonnage at another great task without first putting it in good condition. To do the work the Transportation Service had at its disposal only its own repair yards at New York and the drydock and ship repair yard of the Newport News Shipbuilding Company. Because of this limitation the shipping was tied up longer than would normally have been necessary. The survey conducted by the Transportation Service immediately after the armistice designated fifty-eight cargo transports for conversion. They were the largest vessels of the cargo fleet, and conversion equipped them to carry, on the average, 2,500 troops on each. Thus the project added 125,000 accommodations to the trip capacity of the troop-carrying fleet as it existed on the day of the armistice--more than doubling it in size. By December 13 the survey was complete and the marine architects were drawing the conversion specifications for the individual vessels; and on that day the Service awarded the first of the contracts, that for converting the _Buford_ (which later carried the exported radicals to Russia and gained fame as the “Soviet Ark”). The cost of remodeling the _Buford_ was $70,000, and the contractor completed the work in twenty-eight days. By the end of the year twenty conversion contracts had been placed. Others followed at intervals until April 29, 1919, when the last of them was signed. Before June 1 all fifty-eight ships were in service as troopships.