LARGEST MOTOR-LINER

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 16, 19 January 1924, Page 16

LARGEST MOTOR-LINER

FURNACE WASTE OBVIATED

What is to be the largest motor-liner in the world is to be built by Harland and Wolf at Queen's Island to the order of the Union Castle Mail Steamship Company.. It will resemble^ the'Arundel Castle and will' be of 20,000 tons displacement. It is intended for the Company's South African mail service. _ The builders point out that the order is remarkable evidence of the rapidity with -which the internal-combustion cngme has been, adapted to the require*rnents of marine propulsion. The size of the new vessel will be that of the fastest ocean flyers of the closing days of the last century and bigger, than that of the '■intermediate" type of liners that maintain . Liverpool's services to the American and 'Canadaian ports now that every "messenger kect with fourwmged heel" has gone to the channel ports. It also indicates the enterprise of the Union Castle Line, which takes ,a pioneer-step in adopting of a first class mail and passenger ship a type of engine of so recent invention. * " The substitution of oil for coal in sea power is carried a further and greater [stage than the conversion1 of coal furnaces to oil. The cost of oil burnt in liners' fires greatly oxceods that of coal for equivilant results in steam generation, and oil firing has been condemned as a wasteful use of a commodity in a limited world supply. The case for conversxon was that it reduced the stokehold staff of a liner from 500 to 100 or less, and that fuelling was a matter of hours instead of days. The internalcombustion engine, claimed fo produce more energy; per ton .of oil than the furnace, diminishes the objection of waseful use, and.the, effect of its'adoption on the personnel of a liner must be a further reduction. 1 The new ship will be fitted with 'two sefcs of double-acting eight-cylinder Diesel engines, developing 20,000 horse- , power. The Bunneister and Wain double-acting type engine, which is the one selected, is said to mark as great an advance on the early Diesel engine as i the substitution of the motor for the stsan» engine.