An Inland School of Naval Architecture
It may be of interest to know that perhaps the greatest school of naval architecture in America is not situated on the sea, or some great lake, but is at Cornell University, in central New York. But such seems to be the fact. The department is presided over by Professor Durand, a graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy, who has had eleven years’ work in the construction of ships for the navy, and Assistant Professor McDermott, for twelve years designer and in charge of scientific work in the great J. & G. Thompson shipyards at Clydebank, Scotland. The Cornell school has been running seven years, and men trained in it are employed in all the great shipyards of the country, and have helped to design and construct the Massachusetts, Brooklyn, Alabama, Iowa, Kearsage, Kentucky, Illinois, and, in fact, all Uncle Sam’s recently-built ships, besides hundreds of merchant vessels plying upon the Great Lakes and upon all the oceans. Fifty Cornell students are this year specializing in naval architecture and marine engineering. This shows the war tendency, when a great inland university will make such a thing as the art of building great battle-ships one of its pre-eminent features.