THE MAURETANIA'S LINES

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 172, 23 July 1929, Page 6

THE MAURETANIA'S LINES

The fact'that the great German liner Bremen, one of the two shins built to wrest the Atlantic speed supremacy from the Maurctanitf, is now in commission gives additional point to the following article.

A' short time ago a paragraph appeared in the London ''Evening Standard" saying that the Cun'ard Company was shortly likely to scrap their famous old flyer the- Mauretania, the reason given being the need to produce an even faster vessel to meet the expected German challenge. Like so many others interested in the famous old ship, not long ago I took a run down to Southampton with the express purpose of closely examining the Mauretania. Particular interest was being taken in the vessel, an extensive overhaul, together with a new set of propellers, having had the effect of producing some phenomenal runs; as one old salt said, "She's as skittish as a two-year-old, that old thing." His picturesque description fitted exactly. I found her hitched up in her usual berth. She is, of course, a big ship, but her 36,69(5 tons does not look so very huge as she lies at the wharf. Her lower upper works, streamlined behind her curving bridge, appearing diminutive when compared with the towering square structure carried by vessels like the Berengaria and Majestic, tail off in beautiful proportions towards the stern. They are compact and closeset also by reason that these many decks are mostly well bulwarked up; close packed and tight, in fact, is all her mass of tophamper. Even on her boat deck the same thing shows, her great colony of boats lying head to tail as close as they will lie, "streamlined" in beautiful and orderly array; in short, the entire out-of-water hull is best described with the three "L's," long, low, lean; there- is not a, superfluous pound of flesh-metal showing anywhere. As to her passenger accommodation, it is, of course, excellent, but in the matter of luxury and frills I doubt very much whether she has as much to show as our own Aorangi; but then the Mauretania was built for speed; her job was to beat everything afloat —outside the navy—and she did it.

The vessel is what may be called a national ship; it is not surprising, then, that at South Kensington models of her should be on view, one, a beautiful thing all complete (it is about fourteen feet long) being set up in a small glass house of its own. There is another also, a halflongitudinal section of the hull, beautifully shaped in solid wood, lying out of public view in the basement. Basement or not, I so worked it with the management that I got a good look at it (with a janitor to guide me there), and, what is more, ran a straight-edge over parts I particularly wished to test. 80, as I proceed to describe her lines, I am fairly sure of what I am writing. At one time and another I have examined many scores of models, models of famous China clippers, models of super-speedy battle cruisers and also of many famous old merchant steamers, but the Mauretania stands out supreme; in her "lines" she possesses certain points not duplicated in any other vessel of the many I have seen. As one looks at her bow one sees the entrance shows astonishingly fine and keen, swelling out into quite a moderate flare at the line of the deck; this alone is-remarkable when her great speed is remembered. (Old though she is, over twenty years, on July 19, 1928, she again broke her own best day's run, covering GO3 miles in 24 hours; as the cableman probably meant sea miles, this would work out at 27£ knots per hour.) As the- hull swells out it shows clearly that her greatest beam is about amidships and slightly above the turn of the bilge (this is remarkably sharp; she is as flat as a punt below), that is to I say, much below the level of where the Plimsoll mark would be. Which is only another way of saying the "tumblehome" (the narrowing of the hull from the line of its greatest beam to the deck width) begins very low down; this alone would make the model a remarkable one. The concave lines under the flare of her bows turn gradually into perfect convexity, the hull running out in long, flowing lines to the perfectly-modelled counter, rounding off in an elliptical stern as fine and delicate as any Robert Steele ever built on to the fleetest of his China clippers. But the most noticeable modelling is low down along th*e line of the turn of the bilge, which produced, runs out into the entrance in a delicate convexity, shading off above in the exceedingly fine hollow lines ending in the flare at the bows; I have never seen anything quite like this before. Right aft the keel ends in a long, curving upward leap, perhaps one hundred feet long, very much like the tail of a thresher shark, finishing in the sternpost. The backwash from the two inboard screws (she carries four, two inboard and two outboard) thus runs clear of the skin of the ship, and they also spin clear of the direct backwash of the forward propellers. It is said that the best arrangement for this battery of four screws— quite an innovation at the time—was one of the most difficult problems the builders had to solve. —BARNACLE.