THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1909. THE ERA OF THE BIG SHIP.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3114, 13 February 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1909. THE ERA OF THE BIG SHIP.

[ Concurrently with desperate international rivalry in navy-building there is going on an almost equally intense struggle for mercantile marine supremacy, startlingly stimulated, as Mr Laurence Perry demonstrates in "The World's Work" for January, by the recent speed triumphs of the new Cunarders which have given Great Britain "the blue ribbon of the Atlantic." Thdt so much store should be set by steamer sp«ed and size might superficially look surprising, since even in these rushing days the proportion of voyagers who would rather travel at a mere fairly expeditious rate and feel safe, must be very large. And this idea gets some support in the fact that the old-styie Atlantic liners i

Etruria an J Umbria, which ara rated as 19A knotters, while the Lusitania has averaged her 25 knots between Qjeenstown and New York, continue very popular. And yet there is convincing testimony that dimension? and pace are good assets. That the feats of the new Cunarders, and especially the Lusitania's reduction of the Atlantic voyage to about four days and a half, brought the Cunard line generally a great increase of business is demonstrable from the passenger lists. Speed and big carrying capacity also have a very palpable potential military value, as was shown during the Boer War when troops had to be rushed out to South Africa, and as may at any time be demonstrated under even more trying circumstandes should it become a test between two shipping nations as : to which can carry soldiers over-sea in the greater numbers and at the higher speed, and which has the ' faster scouts and fighting ships. The Germans wsre well seized of all this when they built their record-breakers I which hnvenjw been out-distanced, and followed the scent so keenly that a number of German engineers were aboard the Lusitania on her second trip, and there is said to be evidence that German experts are frequently weeded out from among the stokers and firemen of the bigger Cunarders. There is nothing reprehensible in that, it need scare .ly b: said. All it amounts to is further proof th°t the Germans are indefatigable, and that they are determined to win back their laurels. They might never have lost them if they had had the luck of foresight, for the turbine, like the original steamboat idea, long went begging. As it is, it is estimated that this great, simple invention has given British shipping five years' start in the race for speed supremacy, a period which seems the more assured in view of the delay, necessitated by financial stringency, in building the projected Hamburg liner Europa, which was, or is, to displace 48,000 tons to the Lusitania's 32,000, and to be 80C feet long to her 790. But the turbine itself is also still on trial. Its speed-producing value is undeniable, but there is saisjl to be still rather too much vibration with it, and it does not admit of as expeditious short-handling as could b? desired. An improvement now under is the combination of reciprocating and turbine engines, which has been fitted on the new New Zealand liner Otaki and th° Laurentic, a White Star steamer built fcr the Canadian trade. The Otaki has three propellers of which only the centre one is driven by turbina|s. The one thing certain is that the huge ship, the veritable leviathan of the deep, is the ship of the future. It is a wonderful transition that has made from the crazy little craft in which Britishers and Spaniards and Dutchmen and Portuguese explored and conquered countries on the further sine of the oceans, to the Lusitania over 250 yards long, costing a million pounds to build, requiring officers and crew to the number of 850, and presenting in one bull all the conveniences and luxuries and life ot a floating city, including a daily newspaper supplied by wireless telegraphy with the news of the world. And the Lusitania by no means represents the last word in mamrmth construction. Already the White Star Company has ordered two steamers, to be called the Olympic and Titanic, which are to be 840 feet long, or 50 feet in excess of the biggest Cunarder, and 50,000 tons gross, and will cost a million and a half apiece to build. Those and threatened German liners of 900 feet I length are the biggest that have i been done and projected so far. Size and roominess, however, are recognised as counting elsewhere than in the fast passenger ship. The Dreadnoughts instance thas in the navy, and yet again a grpat dredger has been launched for the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, which is expected to lift 10,000 tons of sand in 50 minutes from a depth of 70 feet, while a steel pjl-tank steamer has been planned <*fi a new basis of far-apart transverse ribs with the idea that thus her deadweight capacity will be greatly increased.