THE LATEST IN STEAMSHIPS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 30 July 1907, Page 2

THE LATEST IN STEAMSHIPS.

: 0 A TIIREE-PROP.ELLOR PRINCIPLE. Received 29th, 11.30 p.m. ~ .' , London, July 29. Borland and Woltt are e,,,,,,.^ Dominion Liue steamers, embodying two sets of quadruple expansion engines with au additional one low pressure turbine, the principle of each independent of the others. This innovation means three distinct and separate propellors.

In those days of Lusitanias and Dro:'4daoughts it is interesting to turn hack a hundred leave or so in the great Book of Time and trace theso things from their beginnings. Though it is ■ actually more than a hundred years since sto.im was first successfully employed as a motive power for ships—for Wm. Symmington built the Charlotte Dundas steam tug tor use on th« Firth of Clyde canal as long ago as 1802— next month is the centenary of the launch, in America, on the waters of the Hudson, of the first steamboat that could bo called n commercial success. In August, 1807, Robert Fulton , built and fitted there a steamboat colled the Clermont, utilising in its construeHon some hints he had got from Symmington, and getting his engines from the firm of Boulton and Watt, as there was no shop in America then capable "■ oi -nfrjking them. ''With splash and creak and groan,"' says a recent writer, "she worked her way up the smooth waters of the Hudson at less than five miles nn hour, sighing along under a pressure of seven pounds of steam, her owner happy in having a score of passengers and a hundred tons of freight to cany."- Many onlookers derided, others predicted calamity, but wise men saw in the vessel, crude as it was, the birth of a new giant force. Steam had come to stay. A' description of tills pioneer boat cannot tat raise a smile.' Sho was 140 ft long by loft wide end 7ft deep. Her boiler, made of copper plates, was so poorly constructed that \ it kept leaking, and the leaks as they developed were stopped with molten load. The fire-box was of masonry. Though modified in variouß details, \i& steadily improved upon, .that panting, wheezy Clermont remained, in all its essential principles, the model for a generation, indeed up to our own time.

The first British builder to follow in . Symmington'a 'wake, was Hobert Bell, who five years after Pulton built the Comet, which plied regularly for paß» seniors on the Clyde in 1812. As early as 1819 *\m American «hip,tho Savannah, had crossed from Savannah to Liverpool in 25 days, 18 of which she was under steam. But she was not a commercial success, nmd another nineteen years passed" before any Vessel made tho whole passage under team. In 1838 the Sirius crossed from London to New York under steam in sixteen days, and proved, theorists notwithstanding thait it could bo done. Tho Groat Western and the British Queen speedily followed the Sirius. They were ail ]>acldle-stoamcrs, increased speed Deing obtained by increasing the size of the cylinder, until at last vessels were so full of machinery that profitable trade became almost impossible. But tho introduction of screw propulsion, diminishing the consumption of coal by about one half, put a new complexion on the business. England waited till the experiment was a proved succe«, Hud her first screw ocean-going steamer was the Great Britain, in 1843. The famous Great Eastern, designed by

Brunei in 1852, was partly propelled by paddle-wheels and partly by Bcrew. Xo ,j us the idea of equipping a vessel (180 ft long, 83ft beam, and 25ft draught, with . t '<& screw-engines of only 4000 indicated ; ; | h.p., 1000 nominal, and paddle-engines -".;' of only 2COO indicated h.p., and 1000 ,'■ nominal, seems little short of absurd. '■'; But, unfortunately for Brunei's master- 1 piece 1 , it was the most that could he done at tho time, and it sealed her fate. The next great advance in machinery \ was thb introduction of the doubla cylinder, and the fmpeweditig-of-nlmple ; engines by compound, nbout 1872. This ! rendered practicable the employment of larger vessel, and in 1881 the Liverpool shipowners astonished the world with the Alaska, fitted with double cxpan- : sion engines, and doing the journey to New York in six days. The name "Ocean Greyhound" was first applied to her. But the record she established did not last long. Triple and quadruple expansion followed naturally on double, and vessels kept increasing in size and spood until they attained the dimoniods of the North German Lloyd Bteamcr Kaiser Wilholm 11,, which, with engines of 40,000 h.p., crossed the Atlantic in five days, at a speed of 23% knots. Further than this it seemed impracticable to go in shipbuilding. ■Bat the Hon. 0. A. Parsons came opportunity to tho rescue of British shipowners, and the invention of the turbine proved the most important departure known in the history of harnessed steam. , The

abandonment of the piston and lie placing of what has been termed "a modified windmill" within the cylinder, • ' \&\o steam being driven against its '■ i vanes, which increase in size and ox- ? posed surface as the steam cools, effected it great economy of space fa {ho en- [, gino room, increased speed, and proved much cheaper at all speeds over 14 knots. The turhine it was that rendered possible the two enormous 40,000 ton boats of tho Cunard line recently launched. It seems now 'that the two latest principles have been combined in one vessel to add this latest triumph ' e to British shipbuilding.