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possibilities. The whole method of convoy and all that kind of thing was a part of it. There were a great many efforts being made to design special kind of ships and boats that would be of use both in carrying cargo over to be utilized by the British after they got there. They would be “abandoned” by those who carried the cargo as not being seaworthy to cross the ocean again and were left. The British would then use them. Among such was a craft that was built experimentally in some port along the gulf coast by the Higgens people, a new shipbuilding outfit, and was designed-by Starling Burgess, who had designed three America Cup defenders.

Anyhow, the President's time was greatly taken up all through the latter part of 1941 with experiments of that sort, thinking about things that could be done. Of course, he was preoccupied also with the whole Pacific situation, where his information coming from our Navy, which was by that time in the Pacific in strong force, indicated the extreme weakness of the British in that area. Certainly that sort of thinkg didn't appear in the newspapers. I don't think the world knew how weak the British were in the Pacific, that they had withdrawn all sorts of naval equipment and personnel out of sheer necessity in order to guard the Channel and the trade routes. The President was very much preoccupied with that.

As 1941 wore on into the summer he was less and less concerned with matters that didn't have to do directly with