BY STEAM AND SAIL

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8349, 8 February 1913, Page 9

BY STEAM AND SAIL

‘The garrulous sea is talking to the shore; let us- go <io\vll and hear the graybeard's speech.*’ In the teeth of a south-wester blowing through the Golden Gate, San Francisco, recently, the ashes of the lato Captain Pete Johnson were tossed upon the waves of the ocean, while a knot of his old-time cronies of the sea knelt in the cockpit of the launch Monk as it rode the breakers just inside the bar. It was the skipper’s last wish that his ashes be spread on his native element, and it gladdened the hearts of his friends that there was a little blow to go with the geremony. The United States Secretary of Commerce and Labour has issued from Washington, D.C., an order that all steamers must instal either a telephone or speaking tube service between the bridge of the vessel and the -wireless operator’s sending room. The order does not include steamers having the radio room located on or near the bridge, so that the officer on duty may talk with the wireless operator without either leaving his post. After lying firmly embedded in the sands off Ocos, Guatemala, for fully five years, the Kosmos liner Sesostris, which stranded while bound from Hamburg to San Francisco in 1907, is said to have been floated. It is reported a Philadelphia salvage _ concern has successfully floated the big steamer, and will tow her to sea. Thousands of dollars have been spent in attempts to float the steamer, but Ocos is an open port, and the salvors could never work quickly enough to make a channel that would stay made long enough to tow the vessel to sea. The keel of the first steel stem wheeler for San Francisco bay services was laid at the Union Ironworks toward the end of December, and work will progress rapidly on the craft. The vessel is a small 100-footer, with a 28foot beam, and is being constructed for the Standard Oil Company. The boat will be a tanker, and take the place of the oil barges now used by the company for supplying vessels in the stream and at the docks. This is one of the first moves of the Standard Oil Company in preparation for the Panama canal trade. Before the canal opens several other similar tankers for bay service will be built by the company. Under the present system of the company, oil burning vessels are supplied either at the oil docks or by barge tankers, conveyed about by launches. The barge tankers are moved slowly, owing to the fact that there is but one launch to three or more barges. The now tanker will be finished early next year, and will be a great timesaving improvement for passenger carrying,- oil-burning steamers operating out of the bay. Considerable interest -is invariably exhibited at the first appearance of any new modern steamer, but bow many of the throng that pay a visit to a vessel take the trouble to oonside the vast work the construction entails or how the actual building is done? Most-people are satisfied to see such vessel, never going to the trouble to consider for a moment such details, brushing aside as of no moment the interesting stages a vessel passes througl from the time the plans are drawn up until she take the water. Therefore, with so much new tonnage coming into Australian waters just now, a word upon the subject of fine details should not be out of place. The work is really done in sections, and first plans are drawn up, usually on a scale of a ouarter or half an inch to the foot. One set of drawings is a plan of the ship’s skeleton or framework, and a series of detailed drawings show the internal deck, bulkhead, and hold arrangements. A wooden block or casting of paraffine wax is usually made to scale from the ship’s plans for testing in a tank. This model is weighted to the loadline and tested for speed, pull, displacement, stability, and a host of other information. During these tests the shape of the model is altered until the desired results are obtained. The next step is to prepare the. ship’s berth, which usually means the placing in position of thousands of wooden piles driven into the ground, on which are laid huge beams and the floor completed with stout planks. Down the centre are placed the keel blocks surmounted by oak caps and assembled on a falling gradient to the water into which the vessel is to he launched. On the usual liner the heel measures about four feet across, and parallel with the keel, but above it and attached by angle bars, is placed the central girder, five feet high, the spao between forming the double bottom. On each side, at regular distances running lengthwise, are seven other girders, the outer one of which is called the margin plate. The watertight cham here are formed by vertical partitions of plates extending above and beneath the floors up to the margin plate on each side. The plating begins /after the great cast steel stern-frame and stem-bar have been attached, and a hydraulic riveter, a marvel in mechanism, with irresistible force and rapidity drives home the rivets that hold the plates in place. In the building of a modem liner over 4,000,000 rivets are usually used. The joints are rendered watertight by caulking. As soon as the outside shell is finished and when work on the inside is advanced to a certain stage, the prob- ' ~~n of launching comes up. The weight of the vessel at this point is usual- - about 15,000 tons. After launching the craft is moored to a wharf and the work of putting in machinery begins. For this gigantic cranes capable of lifting 150 tons more or less are used. While this work is going forward a swarm of men are usually busy day and night on the interior finishing and decorations of the ship, and electricians wire her for light telephone wireless, and electric call service. Then, when all is finished, comes the triumphant day for the builders, when the ship goes on her trial trip and proves herself to be another unit in the carry-ing-trade of the world and in linking together foreign nations.