LINER’S WASH

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 666, 18 May 1929, Page 6

LINER’S WASH

Laundry Efficiency on The Aorangi MANY MODERN METHODS 'p'lVE gallons of liquid blue, 300 ■*- pounds of flake soap, 400 pounds of washing alkali and 50 pounds of starch. No sir! Not your wife’s fast order for washingday necessities, but merely the amount of those substances used in the laundry of the R.M.M.S. Aorangi during her seven weeks’ trip from Sydney to Vancouver and back again. A peep into this floating laundry would make many good housewives heave sighs of despair at the laboursaving devices that are so near and yet so far. An enormous washing machine is the first thing to catch the eye. With monotonous regularity a huge perforated cylinder revolves first toward you and then from you in a bath of water. Inside, the soiled clothes are receiving their first wash. Cold water it is, but being gradually brought to the boil. Fifteen minutes is allowed for this process and then the boiling water is drained off. Hot water is then introduced and boiled and the clothes receive another quarter of an hour of boiling. They are then rinsed twice in warm water and once in cold, each time for ten minutes, and out they come. One hour of this has worked wonders. 2.500 R.P.M. Deftly are they packed into the next device—the hydro-extractor. For ten minutes they are whirled around at the rate of 2.500 revolutions a minute! Small wonder that when they are removed they have “sweated” out all their moisture and are barely damp. To the "tumbler” they go for the removal of all twists, and then a supermangle claims those that require mangling. This giant device conveys the clothes through a veritable labyrinth of rollers and moving calico “treads.” Up and down, in and out they go, the whole system working over a steel-enclosed steam bed that acts as a drier, so that when the garments are delivered at the other end they are perfectly dry and perfectly mangled. “How much would one cost?” a fair visitor was heard to ask. Perhaps she had visions of installing one in some modest flat. An idea of the output of this laundry can be gauged from the fact that the giant mangle alone puts through from 2,700 to 3,000 articles a day. ELIMINATES IRONING Numbers of other modern devices are to be seen in operation. There is the primpress that does away with ironing by exerting 100 pounds’ pressure together with steam heat on ar tides; the stiff shirts and collar machine; the collar-shaper; the suit-pres-ser; the marking-machine, which looks and works like an adding-machine, and imprints any marks you may de sire on your clothes. QUEER MARKS As the batches of soiled clothes are delivered to the laundry by the lift, they are sorted out into pigeon-holes according to their owners, and the owners’ marks chalked up outside. Some queer marks are seen, such as 64X, Saul, 7HB, and Wiles 52. Four men, three women and a manager work eight hours a day for six days in the week, both at sea and in port, to cope with the demands made on the Aorangi’s laundry. In Sydney alone do they get a spell. There the laundry work is sent to a shore firm in order to give the ship’s laundry staff a respite from their labours. Electric power alone is used in this sea-going bagwash concern.