Men — and a Magic Mineral, Chapter 26: "J-M and the Merchant Marine" (c. 1949)

Chapter 26 of Men — and a Magic Mineral: The Annals of Asbestos and Ninety Years of J-M, Johns-Manville's own unpublished corporate history. It is a seven-page typescript headed "220 Madison Avenue, New York," with handwritten editing throughout. The chapter carries no date or author; J-M's file index lists the "nonpublished" manuscript under 1949, and the latest events it mentions are from 1944.

What it shows

The chapter tells how the burning of the liner Morro Castle on September 8, 1934 became, in its words, "an epochal opportunity to J-M." It says 318 of the ship's passengers and 134 of its crew "had been burned to death, drowned or seriously injured." Vice President T. K. Mial sent Evan Rinehart, a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve, to marine architects and shipping companies with samples of Expanded Transite, asbestos flexboard and asbestos cloth.

Fire tests aboard the small steamship S.S. Nantasket ran through 1936 and 1937. J-M's research man G. B. Brown first made Marine Sheathing, a 70-pound board. Ship designers allowed "not over 40 lbs. per cubic foot," and Brown tried "numerous substitutes for Canadian asbestos fibre" until, "early in 1936, the problem was solved by using Amosite fibre from South Africa to bring the weight down — and Marinite was invented."

New fire-safety laws followed, and J-M won the panel contract for the liner America, with a Newport News Shipbuilding order secured by June 1938 (the typed figure is overstruck; J-M's 1942 report to its Officers Board gives 420,000 board feet). Production moved from Nashua, New Hampshire, to Manville, New Jersey, and in 1939 to a leased plant at Billerica, Massachusetts. In wartime, by government direction, Marinite went only into marine panels; "Not until 1944 did J-M get back into other industrial fields."

About this copy

Pages S683-66 to S683-72 of J-M file S683. The yellow highlighting is a later reader's, not J-M's.

Related

• Marinite and the SS Morro Castle disaster, our guide to the product