On this basis, the Emergency Fleet Corporation launched an epic ship-construction programme. With their familiar combination of showmanship, entrepreneurial energy and technical vision, America’s industrial barons competed in meeting ever more excessive targets. Some $2.6 billion later, the results were impressive. In the last six months of 1918 American shipyards delivered as much as the entire world had launched in 1913 – 100 ships on 4 July 1918 alone (Independence Day).17 But by the third quarter of 1918 the military crisis had already passed.
