LINER HALF A MILE LONG.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 3944, 29 May 1913, Page 4

LINER HALF A MILE LONG.

An Atlantic liner half a mile long, registering 200,000 tons, having a beam of 240 ft, and carrying 60,000 passengers, is tho astounding leviathan predicted for tho year 1955 by a leading statistician, Dir. St O. Gn.fillan—that is, if the growth in the size of ships for tho next 40 years, continues at the present rate. -A plotted curve lias be6n shown indicating the, growing-size of modorndm-

increasing ascent tcy the Olympic i r :[>er.ator of to-day. If ibis .. ■/ .s projected' in the most con- . . . - o path to tho year 1935,' we ... ship 1,600 ft long, and) in two i more one of 2,350, or five ■.■bo length of tho Olympic. . have boon growing larger,” :■ authority, “ever since Mr. / . veils, or more probably his /-'mi; first sat on a fog and pad-7 -.-. elf across a creek. And the •'re, -.- ..j l as been perfectly continuous x' : >r one break at the close of tho Kioma-n Empire, when civilisation d - Lin d. Tho extremely rapid dovv.opment of material civilisation today will surely not bo much halted in the next generation, especially since the speed of progress is accelerating. And one of the characteristics of civ-jiT.-.ar ien lias for a .century been a universal growth of the size of things—buildings, railroads, ships, machines. It is hard to imagine a ship whose cable links each weigh two-thirds of a ton being launched in two decades and •a half. But the curve of growth has been steady and sure, except where the Great Eastern exceeded it. If we f.;v- that it will not continue in the future, we but echo what has been Mtwl time and again in the past, and always tho curve has continued. Objections that -greater ships would, be uuwieldly, too deep for our harbors, etc., have boon- made in the past and biotted out by the next leviathan. The advantages of having such large ship will be tho greater speed l they will afford, a reduction of the dangers or perils at sea, and the provision of tri-eater comforts and amusements, not to mention the practical abolition of sea sickness.” ,