CITY AT SEA

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 90, 5 February 1947, Page 5

CITY AT SEA

QUEEN ELIZABETH’S ELECTRIC PLANT

RADAR PROVIDES “MAGIC EYE” LOOKOUT

A city is now at sea, says an American journalist recording his impressions of the Queen- Elizabeth. The Queen Elizabeth represents floating power. .During an Atlantic crossing, it has utilised an electric plant which could illuminate and power such cities as Springfield, Mass., Spokane, Wash., Scanton, Pa., Evansville, Ind., or Bridgeport, Conn. The queen of the seas is a steamelectric ship. Steam is the basic power which is used to propel the ship and to manufacture its electricity. But generally speaking the vessel is electrified.

Four turbo-generators provide the light and power. These provide current for all the galleys, for pumping water for deck machinery, for the sanitary systems, for pumping water into the swimming pool, for refrigerators, communications, and ship illumination.

"Four thousand miles of wiring carry the electric current. There are 30,000 electric lamps on board. Electric motors ranging from onefourth to 360 horse-power are run by the central plant. There are 650 such motors, and they generate a total of about 16,500 horse-power. Deck machinery to raise and drop the 16-ton anchors, to handle cargo machinery to operate 35 freight and passenger elevators, to steer’ the ship with the 140-ton rudder, to heat the ship, all derive current from the central plant. A new and thoroughly modern “lookout”—unthwarted by densest fogs, rain, sleet, or the dark—has been provided by the Queen Elizabeth. It is radar.

The new lookout, a civilian adaptation of the Royal Navy’s highly secret and successful magic eye of wartime is on tireless duty all the time the ship is at sea. A revolving reflector high above the wheelhouse —no longer searching for enemy planes or missiles or hostile ships—searches the sea in a great circle about the ship from 50 yards to 12 miles at sea level.

•Any object which rises above the horizon will show up instantly in the ship’s radar screen in the wheelhouse radar room. The scanner is equipped with de-icing equipment. No winter gale can handicap this lookout. In the radar room a cathode ray tube shows a narrow beam of light rotating 40 times a minute. The tube is 19 inches wide, 27 inches long, 12 inches deep. Any obstruction to the radio pulse which is searching the sea is reproduced visually in the beam. A glowing spot will show the distance and the bearing of the obstruction for an immediate report to the watch officer. ' " '

The radar was developed during the war by Cossor Radar, Ltd., Highbury, London, which built the instruments for the Royal Navy.