The Shell Hits
Page 5
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,We have received a most interesting and artistic brochure from the Shell Marketing Co., Ltd. This brochure has been specially prepared as a concise summary of the wonderful work which the Shell Co. has done in helping to win the war. "Very few people know that the Shell's Portishead distillery produced approximately 80 per cent. of Britain's total output of toluol. This substance, which . is produced from Borneo petroleum, is the basie ingredient of T.N.T.' onesof our most necessary explosives. One of the little but most important romances of the war was the moving of the toluol extracting distillery from Rotterdam to Portishead. The whole of the plant was carried in one steamer, and one torpedo might, have crippled the supply of munitions temporarily.
The next item of interest in the brochure is a vivid description of the difficulties experienced in transporting by sea liver 1,000,000 tons of liquid fuel. At a time when tank steamers were at their scarcest, the Shell Co. put before the Admiralty the proposition of bringing liquid fuel from abroad in the doublebottoms of ordinary merchant ships' and by this method as much as 125,000tons of oil were carried in one month. To. emphasize the difficulties which were.experienced, it is pointed out that 21 vessels of the Shell fleet, of which 12 were totally lost, were torpedoed or mined.