MARINE TATTLE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 666, 18 May 1929, Page 2

MARINE TATTLE

NEW WHITE STAR LlNEß.—Speaking at the annual dinner of the Institute of Marine Engineers, which was attended by the Prince of Wales, Lord Kylsant pointed out that another great development in marine engineering was about to be witnessed, namely, the application of electrical enegy to the propulsion of large ships. He continued: As you are aware, there is building at Belfast a vessel of I,oooft in length for the transAtlantic mail service of the White Star Line. Your Royal Hghness may feel more than ordinary interest in this ship, seeing that you took part in the manufacture of one of the keel-plates during your visit last year to the great steelworks at Motherwell. This vessel will be electrically propelled, but the question whether the machinery for generating the electricity should ta ce the form of steam turbines or motor engines has been receiving long and anxious consideration. Your Royal Highness may be interested ‘to bear that everything indicates the probability that internal-combustion engines will be best adapted to produce the enormous electrical power required to be developed to propel so large a vessel at high speed. The fact that it may be possible to utilise motor engines coupled with the electric drive for this ship constitutes a further remarkable development in marine engineering. EXPENSIVE FROST.—The severe weather which was recently experienced in northern latitudes has proved very expensive to shipowners and shippers, as well as to others, writes the “Shipping World.” The conditions in and about the Baltic were particularly bad. The three keys to the Baltic, the Sound running between Denmark and Sweden, the Great Belt (the international fairway between the Danish islands of Seeland and Funen) and the Kiel Canal, were frozen to such an extent that shipping movements 1 9 - came practically impossible. The situation was even more desperate in other Scandinavian and Baltic waters. No fewer than 36 Norwegian vessels were icebound in the Baltic and Danish waters; all American ships in the Baltic and in Danish waters shared the same fate; in the southern part of the Sound it was impossible even for the very powerful Finnish ice-breaker, the Sampo, to get the ships out of the ice; the Great Belt had been studded with ships of all nationalities. “This must never happen again,” is the declaration of the “Scandinavian Shipping Gazette,” which claims that these conditions would never have occurred if adequate international measures had been taken in the past. It claims that the failure to keep these waters open was chiefly due to lack of organised co-operation between the Powers bordering on the Baltic, all of whom are directly interested in having free access to the outer world by the sea. “It is absolutely necessary to form a kind of Baltic Ice Council, and this council must in future act at once when winter comes. The co-operation must begin as soon as the thermometer drops below zero, and the council must have a detailed scheme worked out that automatically gets into force as soon as the first ice is there. On this council must be represented, apart from Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, the other Baltic States—i.e., Germany, Russia, Esthonia and Latvia, and the financial brunt must be weathered in common by these Powers.” There has been a haphazard kind of cooperation between Denmark Sweden and Finland, which came into force this winter, but the arrangement was made too late. “Too much time.” it is suggested, “was wasted by a policy of everyone for himself.”