LINER LIFTED.

Shannon News, 10 July 1925, Page 4

LINER LIFTED.

CROWNING TRIUMPH OF MECHANICAL MAGIC.

If you had visited Southampton recently, ignorant of the day’s events, you would have thought yourself the victim of an hallucination (says the Southampton correspondent of'the "Daily Chronicle”). Approaching the city you would have seen a ghost,ship, magically suspended above the surface of the hidden waters. Her windowed walls rose higher than the highest buildings, and her funnels out-topped the tallest spires. Having seen her, however, a few hours earlier, I can testify that this was no phantom ship created from the sunset’s magic. She was lying then, in all her pride and strength, in the Queen Dock!, and I knew her for the White Star liner Majestic, the world’s largest vessel. By the magic of modern mechanics that enormous weight of iron and steel was lifted five and a-half feet above the level of the sea. Within four hours from leaving her berth in leash to nine tugs, the world’s biggest ship was standing high and dry in the world’s largest floating dock, built for the Southern Railway Company.

A third world’s record was added to these two. The Majestic’s holds were emptied, but even so she had a displacement weight of 58,000 tons, and that is the greatest burden ever lifted by human agency. When the Majestic had been coaxed within the awaiting dock, which is itself a fifth of a mile long, she rested on a gigantic pontoon. Then came an operation that was wonderful to witness, but impossible to describe, because in it are combined a hundred marvels of engineering.

Briefly, let it be said that in the course of four hours 80,000 tons of •jvater were pumped out of the pontoon by the agency of 14 electricallydriven pumps in 14 power stations on the hollow steel‘walls. Imperceptibly to the eye, the dock rose, carrying the ship up with it, until the pontoon deck was completely otjit of the water, and resting on it, high and dry, delicately but securely poised in her cradle, was the Majestic. From the shores thousands of people watched the raising of the liner. A specially interested spectator on the bridge waa Sir Bertram Hayes, the Majestic’s former captain, who had journeyed from Liverpool.