MUSCLE TO ELECTRICITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 110, 11 May 1926, Page 9

MUSCLE TO ELECTRICITY.

CHANGES IN HANDLING CARGO.

POWER ON THE WATERFRONT

There have been many changes on the waterfront during the past twenty or thirty years, and none is more interesting than the gradual development of the motive power used in handling cargo. Nowadays you never see men turning the windlass handles, but that was a common sight on the shingle and sand cutters not to very long ago. The next improvement was to use the leader of the waiting dray. The end of the tackle used for hoisting the baskets was rove through a block made fast to the coaming of the wharf or embankment, and hitched to the horse just like any other load. Bye-and-byc a horse was kept specially for this hoisting work, and this system continued in use until comparatively late times, when it was superseded by the handy internal combustion engine. In the sailing ship days they used a little portable hoisting engine with a vertical boiler. A few of them may be seen rusting down on a vacant allotment on Freeman's Bay reclamation, along with a lot of other abandoned junk. Strangely enough, there is still one in use occasionally on tho Northerr wharf. It is, however, more often silent than puffing, and rust is more noticeable than paint. Still, the fact that it is still sporadically in commission says much for the workmanship, because it cannot be much under half a century old. These steam portable hoisters were decidedly noisy workers, what with their exhaust pipe up the funnel, and their none too silent gear. When steam ousted sail the tramps naturally used to carry their own winches, and most people who have travelled have suffered the torture of trying to get to sleep with one of these rowdy clattering things working iin the vicinity of the cabins. | In the passenger ships hydraulic ! machines were introduced to eliminate | tho clatter of the geared steam winches, and they were certainly an improvement. When the Diesel engine came into fashion still another method of handling the cargo was evolved. Power generated by the internal combustion engine is not very elastic, that is to say, when you apply it to tho load complicated gears arc necessary, but tin's drawhack was got over by translating it into electric current, which is perhaps the most easily handled force which man has X»t tapped. Now oven the little coal-boal and produce carrier can put out thouj sands of tons of cargo, and there is nof ] more noise than there is aboard ar I aristocratic liner. Each is electrically driven, and only needs one man to oper ! ate it. Instead of having to turn steau lon and off, and move levers to hoist 01 j lower as the ease may be, all the mat: , has to do is to turn a small horizonta I hand-wheel—left for hoisting and righl for lowering. Then, of course, there an the big electric cranes of the Harbom Board, which help to make Auckland one of the quickest ports in New Zea ! land in the matter of cargo handling.