Production. Motor torpedo boats (wooden). An African American carpenter at a Southern shipyard runs a heavy plank through a power saw. He works on the building of seventy-eight-foot wooden torpedo boats which are produced in great numbers at this yard. The hulls of these speedy motor-driven boats are built indoors, of prefabricated parts and sections, and are then moved to neaby water for launching and fitting. Higgins Industries. Sourced from the Library of Congress.