THE WORLD'S GREATEST LINERS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 256, 26 October 1907, Page 9

THE WORLD'S GREATEST LINERS.

Without reasonable basis of comparison we utterly fail to grasp the magnitude of the great Cunarder. The English papers to hand by the last mail are full of pictures and figures about the Lusitania then on her first voyage across the Atlantic. The illustration of this page from the "Daily Graphic" may afford a truer conception than has hitherto been possible of the immense size and possibilities of the steamer. Even an unadorned statement of figures makes the dimensions of the Lusitania appear striking in the extreme. Her length is 785 ft.—only 115 ft. short of three hundred yards. Her breadth is 88ft., depth 60ft. 4iin.; her gross tonnage is 32,500 tons. She has in her depths' twentj r -five cylindrical boilers, and 192 furnaces, which heat a surface of 150,000 and odd square feet. These furnaces generate steam power to the extent of 68,000 horse-power, which in turn gives a speed of 25 knots an hour. In the matter of accommodation' the Lusitania is a veritable town in herself. No fewer than 540 first-class, 4GO secondclass, and 1200 third-class passengers will find room upon her without experiencing anything like unpleasant crowding, their accommodation being contained in over 700 rooms. And yet the size, although not the speed of the Lusitania and Mauretania is to be shortly placed in the shade by the White Star liner now under construction at Belfast. This great vessel is to be 840 feet in length and 86ft in breadth. Like all the White Star steamers that have been built since the Oceanic, which was launched in 1899, the new steamer is not to be an ocean racer. Large carrying capacity, both for passengers and cargo, is to be her chief feature, and she is to be driven by a combination of reciprocating and turbine engines.

Thirty-six years ago the first Oceanic, the first ocean steamer built for the White Star lino, had begun to run between Liverpool and New York, and she, though a vessel of only 3SOS tons gross, was regarded as a world's wonder both in her tonnage and her speed. Only one steamer then running on the Atlantic, the Scotia, of the Cunard line, was larger, and that only lsy a few tons, while the Oceanic was swifter than the Scotia. But the Adriatic, the largest of the White Star steamers now running on the Atlantic, is nearly seven times the tonnage of the first Oceanic, while the steamer which is now to be built will be of about ten times the tonnage of the largest steamer running on the Atlantic in 1871.