SPRING CLEANING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 June 1938, Page 11

SPRING CLEANING

BIG TASK ON MAMMOTH LINER. AMAZING ORGANISATION REQUIRED. When a floating town of several thousand inhabitants has to be "spring cleaned” the task is one which calls for an amazing amount of organisation and costs an equally staggering amount of money. The Queen Mary was recently in the 1 King George V graving dock at South- ' ampton. She was in the hands of cleaners and carpenters, engineers, boilermakers, and electricians, and the ' representatives of a score of other ' trades. Her refitting, lasting about five weeks ’ was the most extensive and most expensive ever carried out on a merchant ship in normal service. The task of reconditioning the Leviathan after her war service was a j bigger job, but the circumstances were _ entirely different. That ship had been practically gutted and turned into a j trooper, and the whole of her passenger accommodation had to be refurnI ished. Similar tasks faced the owners of other big liners—such as the Majestic, Olympic, and Berengaria—in 1919, and , again the work in som? cases was more , difficult and costly than that done to the Queen Mary, but no ordinary an- . nual refit of a liner in peace time has , evei’ approached the dimensions of this one. What the final cost will be only the accountants of Cunard White Star, Ltd, can say, but some idea of the amount of money involved can be gained from the fact that the cost of merely putting the Queen Mary into dry dock, keeping her there for a fortnight, and undocking her again, without taking into account any of the work done on the ship, is in the neighbourhood of £lO,OOO. One of the main reasons for the docking has been to enable a small army of workmen to chip away the many layers of preservative paint which have coated the hull ever since the days when she lay in a state of suspended animation on the stocks at Clydebank. This is the first time the company have been able to spare her from the service long enough for this to be done properly. Recently the hull was repainted with anti-corrosive and anti-fouling composition, many thousands of gallons being used to cover some 100,000 square feet of steel plating.

The four propellers and tail shafts were removed for cleaning, adjusting, and retuning. Part of the promenade deck was taken to pieces and reconstructed by means of electric welding, and the whole of the passenger accommodation stripped of its furniture and fittings. Everything was cleaned and mended —replaced if too worn —and when one thinks of the miles of carpets, hundreds of yards of curtains and acres of floors involved in this gargantuan “spring cleaning,” it is no surprise to learn that some 1,300 workmen were employed on the job. Rumours have lately been current that a substantial increase in speed may be expected. This is, however, very improbable. The Cunard White Star have no intention of “racing” the ship, any more than they have done in the past. Her clean bottom may give her a fraction of a knot more in hand, but what is much more likely is that the difference will be noticed in fuel consumption.