Geoffrey Pyke managed to convince Lord Mountbatten of the potential of his proposal (actually prior to the invention of pykrete) sometime around 1942, and trials were made at two locations in Alberta, Canada. The idea for a ship made of ice impressed the United States and Canada enough that a -long, 1,000-ton ship was built in one month on Patricia Lake in the Canadian Rockies. However, it was constructed using plain ice (from the lake), before pykrete was proposed. It took slightly more than an entire summer to melt, but plain ice proved to be too weak. Pyke learned from a report by Herman Mark and his assistant that ice made from water mixed with wood fibres formed a strong solid mass—much stronger than pure water ice. Max Perutz later recalled: