FASHIONS IN SHIPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 May 1938, Page 7

FASHIONS IN SHIPS

CHANGES DURING HUNDRED YEARS. It is interesting to note how in the last hundred years what may be termed fashions in ships have changed. In feminine fashions careful observers have often noted the tendency to move becoming apparent in naval architecture. A century ago the vogue was all for fiddle or clipper bows, more often than not adorned with a figurehead. Today, after many years of ugly straight stems, the raked or flared bow is the most popular form. This is strongly reminiscent of the clipper type, and lovers of maritime beauty, as opposed to mere utilitarianism, are grateful to those Norwegian shipowners who are reintroducing the figurehead in a modern and modified form.

A century ago every true sailor shuddered at the sight of a funnel poking its sooty nose between the tapering masts and fouling the sails, but in the years between about 1880 and 1914 the cry was for more and more' funnels. They were supposed to convey to the ignorant traveller a sense of power below decks, and so strong was this feeling that many liners were fitted with dummy funnels merely for the sake of appearances. From an aesthetic point of view, one of the worst examples of this funnel complex in recent times was provided by the Union-Castle liners Arundel Castle and Windsor Castle, with foqr apiece. Built at Belfast soon after the War, they have been the subject of much sarcastic comment on the Southampton and Cape Town waterfronts, but they, too, have now followed the wheel of fashion.

Both ships have been re-engined, to make them faster, and in the process they have been shorn of their four spindly stacks. Each has now but two low, unobstrusive funnels. Some shipowners—such as the East Asiatic Company, of Copenhagen—have in their motor liners eliminated funnels altogether, while others have striven to make these useful excrescences as little noticeable as possible. The first ship to be completed at Belfast this year, the Lamport and Holt motor liner Delane, is a pioneer in this latter respect. Her funnel is cunningly combined with, and almost hidden by, her midships superstructure. Funnel, bridge, captain’s quarters, wireless rooms, and passenger accommodation are all in one streamlined piece, and the camouflage effect is heightened by the normal funnel markings—black, blue, and white — being carried in broad bands of paint across the whole of this structure. — “London Observer.”