THE SEA TITAN.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9336, 4 January 1909, Page 6

THE SEA TITAN.

WONDERS OF A LEVIATHAN DREDGER. The mighty modern shipbuilding works which Mesrss Oammell, Laird arid 00. have established at Tranmere, on the Mersey, were fitly inangurated, says-the Daily Mail, London, by the hwinch of a vessel that has no compeer in the world. Her name is the Leviathan, but it is hardly expressive enough; her amazing power and mission in life seems to demand an appellation that shall strike the imagination upon hearing it as powerfully as does the actual contemplation of her wonders. Ah unceasing fight has been waged by Liverpool’s harbour engineers with the never-ceasing inset of sand by means of dredges, ever increasing in size, power, and ingenuity of construction. Now comes the Leviathan which will lift and load herself with 10,000 tons of sand in fifty minutes from a depth of seventy feet. Pour enormous suction pipes, each 10ft 6in. in circumference, will wrest from the sea bed in jten minutes less than an hour the load of a thousand ordinary railway trucks —the burden of twenty ordinary heavy goods trains.

Only an engineer can grasp the alteration of stresses in such a vessel as this by reason of the sudden dumping into her of ten thousand tons of dead weight, and the even greater strain by the still more sudden falling out of the load through the great valves in her bottom. This vessel is nearly five hundred feet long, and when empty carries an enormous weight of machinery in one end. The distribution of strains in the Forth Bridge, is as nothing to this test of the "modern shipbuilder. There are- four sets of tripleexpansion Engines deco Ssiary to work the ’ gigantic - pumps, an immense hydraulic installation, nsed ’ for working the many enormous valves whioh keep all the “cargo” portion of the vessel in direct communication with the sea, steam winches apparently everywhere, and/of course, a complete electrical installation. In the captain’s room there is a multiplicity of indicators, electric pushes, dials, telephones, and recorders, almost as many as in the conning tower of a battleship, all to keep him in touch with the working of every part of the mighty machine. Behold his standing there, the gigantic labours of the centrifugals below him making the whole fabric tbrob and> heave. He watches the draught indicator showing how foot by foot she is settling in the water. A bell rings, she is full. He presses a button, which is answered by the olangonr of the windlass ripping > the anchors from their hold, more ringing of bells, communications from the andbors-lifters, to the engine room. Away she goes with her load from the huge burrow-pit beneath at the rate of ten knots an hour. She reaches her marks. He who must be obeyed touches a button here and there, she stops, shudders, and rises, free of ten thousand .tons of weight, then turns and speeds back again.