Dear Histarchers

I am undertaking some research on a brick that was raised from the
shipwreck MV City of Rayville (1940). This was a US Merchant navy vessel,
and was the USA's first vessel lost in WWII. The City of Rayville was built
by Oscar Daniels in Tampa, Florida in 1920. The brick is imprinted with the
word "SPLIT". Imprinting on bricks normally identifies the maker, however
web searching suggests that split is a manufacturing process, involving
splitting the brick along its length prior to firing. This also appears to
be a uniquely American manufacturing process, although I found the term
"Soap" brick used in the UK, which also seems to refer to a half-width
brick. The dimensions of the brick are 230 x 32 x 112: approximately half
the normal width of a normal sized brick. Some Real Estate links came up
that refer to split brick court yards etc, but after questioning some
architects & brick experts here in Australia I have determined that this
was not common here.

Does anyone have information about split bricks that they could share with
me?   I also thought it was rather strange to imprint the word 'split' onto
the brick, given that it ought to be obvious that the brick is half the
width anyway! I located a reference in a builder guide to a company in
Alabama called Split Brick Inc, however the emails keep bouncing and access
to the website comes up as 'forbidden'. Therefore I guess my question is:
is "Split" the maker's mark, or does it identify the process?

Hope you can assist! If you are interested I can email an image of the
artefact.



Kind Regards

Cassandra




Cassandra Philippou
Maritime Heritage Unit
Heritage Victoria
Level 22, Nauru House
80 Collins Street
Melbourne 3000 Victoria
Ph:   03 9655 9752
Fax:  03 9655 9720

Visit these sites!
http://www.heritage.vic.gov.au
http://www.aima.iinet.net.au
http://www.archaeologyweek.com



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