BY STEAM AND SAIL

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8355, 15 February 1913, Page 9

BY STEAM AND SAIL

lrt Tlie garrulous eea is talking to the shore; let us go down and hoar the gray beard’s speech. ” The tragic fate of the Titanic has set inventors busy all over the world devising craft which shall bo unsinkable. but few of them have planned on such a magnificent and awe-inspiring scale as Mr N. A. Lybeck, of New York City. Mr Lybeck has constructed a model of an ocean liner which resembles nothing so much as a floating skyscraper. He proposes that for practical purposes his ship shall have a length of 1500 feet and a breadth of 1000 feet, and that it shall consist of seven great hulls of conventional design, bearing a rectangular structure surmounted by two turrets, each 200 feet high, above the water-line. Propulsion is to be effected by means of 360 paddle-wheels, actuated by Diesel engines. The paddle wheels are to consist of great hollow drums, each bearing eight blades, and the drums are to be .of sufficient size to keep the vessel afloat even if every watertight compartment in each of the seven great hulls is flooded. Mr Lybeck does not expect his ship to pitch or to toss. He, has a number of scoops at the bow which are to serve the purpose of “wave levellers,” ironing out the sea as the great craft advances, and ensuring absolute freedom from vertical motion. These “wave-levellers,” too, *>re expected bv Mr Lybeck to deal with icebergs much as a locomotive deals with cows. The bergs are to be 'pushed underneath the vessel. But .in order to avoid such little encounters with solid objects, the inventor proposes.to have his look-out man stationed on tne end of a slender girder bridge, projecting 200 feet from the bows of his leviathan. Mr Lybeck states with modest pride that the carrying, capacity of such a vessel as he has devised would be so great that four of them could undertake the whole of the trans-Atlantic freight and passenger trade. Strange to say, however, no enterprising steamship company has yet approached Mr Lybeck with an offer for his patent rights. Chief- Purser Lancaster, who retired from the Atlantic liner Lusitania, uad during the seventy-six voyages of' this liner watched over the needs and comforts of 189,295 passengers, and in the Lusitania alone he has travelled nearly half a million miles. In the course ■of his duties he has 'come in contact with a great number of the cost prominent people of the day, and he is proud of his large collection of presents and autographed portraits, ft ia not too much to say that among Atlantic passengers few figures are better known than his. Mr Lancasjr, who first went to sea forty-four years ago, is one of the very few pursers who hold a master’s certificate, i'his he gained in 1878, and he began his career with ,the Gunard Company m 1879, when he was appointed third officer of the s.s. . Brest, running in the Mediterranean service. But defective eyesight put ait end to , his career “on deck.’.’ The Pacific Mail liner City of Panama is being quietly offered for sale at San Francisco, and the indications are, if the sale goes through, that the vassed will change owners tor a comparatively small consideration. As the result of complaints to the United States Department of Commerce and Labour regarding the seaworthiness of the vessel, it was taken off the run and sent to an anchorage in the stream. The Government inspectors made a thorough examination of the vessel and declared that there was nothing in her condition to warrant the withdrawal of her license before its regular date of expiration. All that this meant was that the ship complied with the letter of the law. For the sendee she was ia the Panama had outlived its usefulness. The Pacific Mail Company has quietly offered the vessel for sale, but the highest bid so far received is said to have been £BQfl, but the owners arc said to be holding out for a higher figure. The Goodwin Sands, off the coast of England, have no dambt caused more misfortune than any reef in the world. For many years the average losses there, on the two miles of rock that extend along the Kentish coast, have been one a month, and it has been an insatiable monster for those who “go down to the sea in ships” for eight long centuries back. Referring to the locality some little time ago, an English paper stated it has been a trap for the mariner since 1099, when the sea swallowed up what was before the fair and fertile Island of Tomea and turned it to what it now is—a hungry, -treacherous burial ground for vessels that corns within the tentacles, for once one strikes it a hold is taken that never relaxes, no matter what size or how powerful a vessel to ay be. Some of Queen Anne’s navy, thirteen sound, well-built men-o’-war, with twelve hundred souls on board, drifted there as far back at 1703, so .records state, and they were never seen again, just as from then onward so many other vessels have disappeared.