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Hon. HERBERT C. BONNER,

THE GENERAL COUNSEL OF THE TREASURY,
Washington, July 24, 1963.

Chairman, Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries,
House of Representatives, Washington, D.C.

DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: Reference is made to your request for the views of this Department on H.R. 6007, to permit the vessel SC-1473 to engage in the fisheries. It is understood that the vessel SC-1473 was built in Nova Scotia. Consequently, the proposed legislation would, in effect, authorize the use of the vessel in the transportation of merchandise and passengers between points in the United States embraced within the coastwise laws and in the fisheries notwithstanding the fact that this vessel is of foreign build and that foreign-built vessels are generally excluded from use in any trade other than foreign trade (46 U.S.C. 11, 251, 883). The bill would, therefore, confer upon the vessel and its citizen owner privileges not available generally to foreign-built vessels owned by citizens of the United States. Whether such privileges should be granted is a matter of policy upon which this Department expresses no opinion. Since the bill would waive only the prohibition against the use of a foreignbuilt vessel in the coastwise trade and the fisheries, the Department would require the vessel to comply with the vessel inspection and navigation laws administered by the Coast Guard. The Treasury Department anticipates no administrative difficulty in carrying out the purposes of the act.

The Department has been advised by the Bureau of the Budget that there is no objection from the standpoint of the administration's program to the submission of this report to your committee.

Sincerely yours,

G. D'ANDELOT BELIN,

General Counsel.

Mr. THOMPSON. The first witness will be Mr. Harry Hudson, of Mount Pleasant, S.C.

Mr. RIVERS. May I, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. THOMPSON. Would you, please, Congressman?

The Chair would like to say it is always a privilege to have a constituent of our distinguished colleague here and you no doubt would have been adequately represented by him, but it is always good to know we have an expert here to advise him.

Mr. HUDSON. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF HON. L. MENDEL RIVERS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA

Mr. RIVERS. I don't know how well represented he is, Mr. Chairman, until after I see how we make out.

Mr. PELLY. Did you support the City of New Orleans when some of us were trying to get a similar bill through?

Mr. RIVERS. That is like talking about canoes with the United States. That is the same comparison.

Mr. PELLY. The principle of it remains the same. I know you are a gentleman of very high principles.

Mr. THOMPSON. In other words, in Louisiana parlance, this is a piddling thing.

Mr. RIVERS. This is worse than a piddling thing.

Mr. Chairman, may I say something before the interrogation of my friend from Mount Pleasant?

I really should apologize to the committee for bringing this to your attention. If there is anything more ridiculous than my taking up your time on this I would like to know what it is. This really should not come up here. There is no grounds for it. This is a dere

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lict. Mr. Hudson does everything on earth-he works with his hands. He has left his job to come up here. In his sparetime he shrimps like a lot of other people, and he builds his own shrimper like everybody else does in Charleston. He saw this derelict sitting out on the mud where it has been for 10 or 15 years and he wanted to make something out of it, but he found out that some time in the dim, distant past, this derelict was made somewhere else and he couldn't get it licensed. Really, he is the only person that could see any good in it. Because he is an artisan of the finest sort he saw some use he could make out of this mahogany and he took the guts out of it and stripped it down to a skeleton. I would like for you to see the pictures. We could not get it licensed after he finishes with it, and that is why we are here.

I wanted you to see what he started with. Now I will turn him over to you and let you say whatever you want to him. But this is the nut in the coconut.

Mr. THOMPSON. The preamble was eloquent.

Mr. RIVERS. Mr. Zincke and I beat this back and forth for many weeks, but now I will be happy to turn you over to Mr. Hudson for whatever you want to ask him. He can give you his story.

This is Mr. Harry Hudson from Mount Pleasant, which is Charles

ton.

Mr. THOMPSON. We are happy to have you, as I stated, and if you have a statement to make, please proceed, sir.

STATEMENT OF HARRY HUDSON, MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C.

Mr. HUDSON. Well, this vessel was built for the Government during the war, in Weymouth, Nova Scotia.

Mr. PELLY. Could I interpose a question?

Mr. THOMPSON. Yes.

Mr. PELLY. I think there is quite a distinction here. As I recall during the war there was an arrangement made so that each one of our services-the Navy, the Army, and Air Force--had to spend so much money in Canada in order to try to provide exchange and therefore it was required that the Navy place these contracts in Nova Scotia. I think I was influential eventually in getting Secretary of Defense Wilson to cancel that order.

Mr. RIVERS. I think you are right. I remember that.

Mr. THOMPSON. Is it true-I am putting it in the form of a question-is it true this contract was primarily let to an American concern who later subcontracted with the Nova Scotia firm to build the vessel?

Mr. HUDSON. Yes, sir; it was. The vessel was built by War Supplies Limited, Washington, D.C., and was accepted by the Navy in 1942, contract number and all. By the Le Blanc Shipbuilding Co., in Weymouth, Nova Scotia.

Mr. THOMPSON. So, the prime contract was with an American shipyard?

Mr. RIVERS. When did you get interested in it?

Mr. HUDSON. In 1951.

Mr. RIVERS. Tell them that for the record. It had been sitting out on the mud for how long?

Mr. HUDSON. Since 1952.

Mr. TOLLEFSON. What did they put it up on the mud for?
Mr. RIVERS. To get it out of the way of the channel.

Mr. THOMPSON. Let's get the history of it in your words, sir, after it was built in Nova Scotia, it was used by the Navy!

Mr. HUDSON. That is right.

Mr. THOMPSON. Was sold?
Mr. HUDSON. In 1946.

Mr. THOMPSON. Sold to whom?

Mr. HUDSON. They changed hands about five different times.
W. C. Bannister first bought it.

Mr. THOMPSON. Where was he from? I mean, was he a U.S. citizen?
Mr. HUDSON. He was a citizen of the United States. William Little,
James Edwards-

Mr. RIVERS. De Mackiewicz, looks like a Polish name. I don't know where he was from, but it changed hands five times, and then it was declared surplus, when was it abandoned?

Mr. HUDSON. It was sold to Gus Maloney, Maloney Distributing Co., which I got it from Maloney Distributing Co. This fellow wanted it for junk. He wanted the insides of the boat, you know, the motors, bits, and chunks.

Mr. RIVERS. He is a fellow who sells

Mr. THOMPSON. Did he strip it prior to your purchase of it?
Mr. HUDSON. I stripped it, sir.

Mr. THOMPSON. You bought it from him intact?

Mr. HUDSON. That is right, intact.

Mr. RIVERS. Who put it up on this mudbank?

Mr. HUDSON. I did. Let me tell you the whole story.

Mr. THOMPSON. Just tell us the whole story.

Mr. HUDSON. After I got the ship and stripped it and decided to make a shrimp trawler out of it, I went to the customhouse and they told me I couldn't fish it in the commercial fisheries, but I could use it for anything else, towing bananas from South America, if necessary, but I couldn't use it in commercial fisheries. So I figured I had a lemon. I would make a lemon head out of it, so I put it up on this bank to make a seafood restaurant out of it. But there is not a bank or nobody else in South Carolina who would finance such a restaurant. It was a good idea. But they all told me if you could use the boat to shrimp; in the shrimp fisheries, the banks would finance me. I have been trying ever since to get this boat to fish.

I thought they would waive the law———

Mr. THOMPSON. Had you in the meantime done any repairs to it?
Mr. HUDSON. Right now?

Mr. THOMPSON. To what extent have you completed the fitting out of it for a shrimp vessel?

Mr. HUDSON. I couldn't use the engines for one thing, I don't think anybody but the Government could use them. They used a hundred gallons an hour, twin screws, high-octane gasoline. I had to put diesel engines in it. The pilot house wasn't suitable, you can see it was torn out. There has to be fish bins put in her. She would have to practically be rebuilt in order to shrimp her.

Mr. RIVERS. He just has the skeleton of it.

Mr. HUDSON. She is stripped down to the bare hull, which is solid Philippine mahogany, copper bottom, copper rivets, and brass screws. There is not a nail in it or

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Mr. THOMPSON. How long is it?

Mr. HUDSON. 112 feet long, 18-foot, 8-inch breast. The shrimp business is coming to the point you need larger boats and more power, to pull larger nets. And if I could get permission to fish this boat, it would be one of the largest boats on the Atlantic coast. There are similar boats, 104-footers, built in this country, and they are fishing down off Trinidad, and they are doing well. They make good shrimp boats.

Mr. THOMPSON. Where will you expect to make use of this boat? Mr. HUDSON. Right there in South Carolina, during the season, and then move to Georgia and Florida and possibly the gulf.

Mr. PELLY. How far out do you go for shrimp in that area?

Mr. HUDSON. Anywhere from 2 miles, sir, to, I would say, 7 or 8, depending upon the bottom.

Mr. RIVERS. The law of South Carolina has a minimum, it used to be 3 miles off the coast because the smaller shrimp are protected to the coast and we want them to get large. They spawn in the little creeks and so forth, and it would be an advantage to the State for trawlers to get as far off the coast as they can, because, we want the younger, the smaller shrimp, to mature.

He would really be making a contribution. The farther out he can get, the better it is for the industry.

Mr. PELLY. Is it a technical matter? If you are going to use the skeleton of the vessel

Mr. RIVERS. It is a technical matter.

Mr. PELLY. The work is going to be done on that boat in the United States by yourself and the materials will be U.S. materials

Mr. HUDSON. That is right.

Mr. PELLY. I think you are using great ingenuity and as far as I am concerned I think that is the kind of thing we ought to support. Mr. RIVERS. He is doing that up on the mudbank in his spare time. Mr. HUDSON. I couldn't duplicate a hull like that, solid Philippine mahogany, double planked, herringboned, if you understand that expression. She is as good as the day she was built.

I might add the people of Nova Scotia who build that boat are good boatbuilders. I have been in the shipbuilding business for 25 years, 13 of those 25 years in the Charleston Navy Yard as a supervisor. I think I know a boat. I know what the Navy does to a boat. They keep it in good shape.

Mr. TOLLEFSON. What was the vessel used for after the Navy disposed of it?

Mr. HUDSON. She never was used, sir.

She just changed hands. No one could run it.

Mr. TOLLEFSON. Until you got it?

Mr. RIVERS. They had to have wooden subchasers; they had to because of mines. They were fast and they consumed an awful lot of gas. The only thing he is interested in is the wood in it, so he is going to start off with this skeleton you are talking about, and this is really a technical matter.

Mr. THOMPSON. The chairman might state, counsel has indicated this boat could be used in coast wise trade. Frankly, it is my belief personally that this law was never intended to go so far as to cover such a thing as this where only the skeleton is being used and actually nothing that the ship was fitted for originally is being used.

Mr. HUDSON. That is right. It is not.

Mr. THOMPSON. It is merely a matter of taking something he picked up from a junkyard, actually, and is using the skeleton to modify it and make it workable.

Mr. RIVERS. He is the only person of my acquaintance that has seen any good in it.

Mr. THOMPSON. So, it seems to me that the Congressman from South Carolina was right in saying we are taking up a lot of time on a technicality imposing upon us a law that never was meant to cover this type of thing. I would like to insert in the record without objection the origination of this craft in order that it be available.

(The material mentioned follows:)

NAVY DEPARTMENT,
BUREAU OF SHIPS,
Washington, D.C., April 20, 1948.

THIS IS TO CERTIFY that the records of this office disclose that the Navy vessel SC-1473 (ex-PC-1473) was built in the United States for the account of the Navy Department as represented by the Bureau of Ships at Washington, D.C., in the year 1942 under contract No. NObs 748.

The vessel was built by War Supplies, Limited,' Washington, D.C., and was accepted by Navy on December 5, 1942, and that no record appears that title has since that date been vested in an owner other than the United States.

That it is impracticable to furnish a Builder's Certificate and that the information herein contained has been furnished in lieu of a Builder's Certificate, and that to the best of my knowledge and belief, based upon the information hereto attached, title is vested in the United States as sole owner of the vessel herein above mentioned.

R. A. PORTER,

Lt. Comdr. (SC)USN, Assistant to Head of Materials Control Branch.

BILL OF SALE OF UNDOCUMENTED VESSEL

To all whom these presents shall come, greeting:

Know ye, That the United States of America, represented by the U.S. Maritime Commission, sole owner of the undocumented wood motor vessel called the SC1473, which was built in the year 1942, by LeBlanc Shipbldg., Co. Ltd., at

for the Navy Department, and which vessel is believed but not warranted to be approximately of the dimensions and description set forth below:

Length, 112 feet, Breadth, 18 feet, Depth, 8 feet;

Engines, Two (2) Hall-Scott, Gas, 650 H.P. each;

for and in consideration of the sum of Ten Dollars ($10.00), lawful money of the United States of America, to it in hand paid before the sealing and delivery of these presents by J. H. deMackiewicz, an individual of Rochelle, N.Y., and other good and valuable consideration, the receipt of both which it does hereby acknowledge and is therewith fully satisfied, contented and paid, has bargained and sold and by these presents does bargain and sell unto the said J. H. deMackiewicz, his heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, all the right, title, and interest of the United States of America in and to the said undocumented wood motor vessel SC-1473 "as is, where is," together with all her engine machinery the masts, sails, boats, anchors, cables, tackle, furniture, and all other necessaries thereunto appertaining and belonging, now on board;

TO HAVE AND TO HOLD the said undocumented wood motor vessel SC-1473, and appurtenances thereunto belonging now on board, unto him, the said J. H. deMackiewicz, his heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, to the sole and only proper use, benefit, and behoof of him, the said J. H. de Mackiewicz, his heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns forever; and it the said United States of America, represented by the U.S. Maritime Commission, hereby expressly

18C-1473 built by subcontractor LeBlanc Shipbuilding Co., Ltd., Weymouth, Nova Scotia.

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