Reports of the Shipping Board's activity led to expectations of an unprecedented number of ships to be launched, fitted and ready for transport and trade purposes within a very short interval. Much enthusiasm was created by the Fourth of July splash, 1918, when, according to the New York _Tribune_, in twelve hours steel and wooden ships hit the water in clouds of smoke and spray, at the rate of one every seven minutes. The era of Mr. Jefferson Brick had undoubtedly returned, for the _Tribune_ went on to expatiate in poetical exuberance that the shores of "Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay, Columbia river, the Gulf of Mexico, the Delaware, Chesapeake Bay, New York Bay, and all the coast of New England and the Great Lakes were laved by the backwash of the great ships of the Liberty Fleet rushing to their proper element." The Bureau of Navigation estimated that by the end of June, 1918, 1,622 ships of 1,430,793 gross tons would be launched--more than double the output of German yards in times of peace. One article refers to the actual event as follows: [Illustration: Copyright by Charles Phillip Norton Building a Steel Ship in Seattle, Washington American ship-building during the war was planned on a gigantic scale to make good the losses by submarines and to provide transportation for American troops to Europe. The _West Lianga_, shown above, an 8,800-ton cargo carrier was launched within 55 working days and delivered, ready for cargo, in 67 days.] AMERICAN LOSSES--NEW TONNAGE BUILT "At San Francisco on July 4th, Mr. Charles M. Schwab, Director-General of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, said to the shipworkers: 'If you stand up to your job, we'll make the Kaiser take his medicine lying down.' Mr. Schwab also ventured the statement that this Fourth of July shows the greatest record of launchings for a single day in the world's history, and added: "'Every time we launch a cargo or troopship or tanker we add to the certainty that German submarines can not win this war. Already we have the U-boats on the run, and if we keep up the pace we will have them beaten by next year. And when we achieve this victory it will be you who will deserve the credit. "'In 1915 all the shipyards in America turned out 215,602 dead-weight tons of shipping. The next year our output jumped to 520,847 tons. In 1917 the hot pace continued until we very nearly doubled the output of the previous year, completing a total of 901,223. I am confident now that if we pull together and every man stays on the job, we will produce more than 3,000,000 dead-weight tons in 1918--the greatest output of any nation in the world in a single year.'