THE LINER QUEEN MARY

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 60, 27 March 1937, Page 9

THE LINER QUEEN MARY

, 1 1 Great Steaming Power

Additifonal facts about the steaming power of the Cunard-White Star liner Queen Mary have now been diselosed. Among them is the power which her turbines, fe.d by 24 great Yarrow boilers, Were built to develop. The nominal designed ..output is 158,000 h.p., vtransmitted through the four shafts. With this power the ship maintains a epeed of 28J knots. But the Queen Mary 's full engine power is mueh greater than these official figures indicate. Her desi'gners built her to run 145,000 nautical miles a year, at a steaming time of 112 hours, from sCherburg to New York and vice versa. To maintain this schedule it was necessary to install not only inachinery of the strongest and most reliable type, but boilers which would remain in efficient operation throughout the full travel season without cleaning. Further, a large margin of power had to be provided to permit of driving the ship at speeds in excess of the normal 28i knots, to make up time which might be lost through fog or bad weather. To meet these requirements extra boiters were installed^ As a result, it would be possible, if the necessity arose. to shut down a number of boilers and clean them at sea, without any reduction in the designed outpAt of 158,000 h.p., says a London writer. ■ While the exact figure of horsepower generated when all boilers are

in use and working at full pressure is still 'a secret, it cannot be lese than 190,000 and is probably over 200,000. On her xecord-breaking sixth xound voyage the. ship averaged 30.01 knots on the outwar.d and 30.57 knots on the homewaxd run. At times she was moving at more than 32 knots, a speed which could hardly be attained with less than 200,000 h.p. Before being withdrawn recently for overhaul, the ship had eompleted 14 round voyages, eqolvalent * to about 94,000 nautical miles. Mueh of this distance was covered in exceptionally bad weather. Experience gained with the Queen Mary has been embodied in the design of her sister ship, No. 552. As the gross tcnnage of this vessel will exceed that of her consort, and a slight increase in speed is ttnderstood to be aimed at, the nominal horse-power is likely to Be about 170,000, and the maximum output well over 200,000. The French liner, Normandie, has a designed horse-power of 160,000. The highest power ever developed at sea, aceording to official. xecor.ds, was that of the Uuited States aircraft carrier Lexington. This ship, df 39,000 tons displacemont, isv nominally of 180,000 h.p., with a speed of 33i knots. On a run from San Francisco to Honolulu she developed for one hour 210,000 h.p., attaining a speed of 34J knots.