No. 1 Cargo Hold & Museum

You are now in Number 1 Hold, the forward most cargo hold in the ship.  During the war a few ships occasionally developed cracks, and on four occasions they cracked so severely that they sank.  (One theory that was widely believed at the time was that this was being caused by stresses locked into the hull by the new welding processes that were being used to mass produce ships, but this turned out to not be the case. Delete)  The primary cause of the cracking was (delete)eventually traced to the square hatch corners such as those you can see above you, which resulted in areas of high stress concentrations where fatigue cracks could develop.  The problem was made worse by the combination of welded construction and steel that became brittle at cold temperatures. This combination meant that in cold waters a crack could potentially run all the way around a ship’s hull in an instant.  Starting in 1943 ships were retrofitted with stress relievers that effectively rounded off the corners of the hatch openings and spread the stress at the corner over a larger area.  This fix was not required on this hatch due to the deck stresses being lower near the ends of the ship, but as you exit through number 2 look for the curved steel plates welded in each corner of the hatch- these are the stress relievers that were installed there.

new copy from brian

#1 Cargo hold is the most forward of the five cargo hatches.  It is the smallest of the cargo holds and on the tween deck level contains the #1 tween deck museum with the dioramas and military vehicles.  Below #1 tween deck is the museums storage which during the war would have contained general cargo. This area is off limits to visitors.  Below this cargo area are two of the ship’s deep tanks which are used for fuel storage.