MAMMOTH LINER’S NEW SKIN.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 3946, 31 May 1913, Page 10

MAMMOTH LINER’S NEW SKIN.

OLYMPIC AGAIN AT SEA. Fitted with an inner skin, which ensures the maximum degree of safety that human ingenuity can contrive, the world's largest vessel, the "White Star liner Olmypic has resumed her trans-Atlantic sailings. For five months the liner lay at Belfast in the yard of Messrs Harland and Wolff, where the extensive alterations were carried out.

The new skin or hull is of steel plating, with frames of heavy channel steel, and between it and the outer skin of the ship there is a space of 3ft occupied by watertight bulkheads and divisions. By means of the second or inner skin the ship is protected from the dangers which would ensue if the outer shell was damaged. The precautions to safeguard, the Olympic, however, are not confined to this fixture. She Has been furnished with an extra system of piping, throgh which all the pumps can draw in an emergency, and separate compartments can be pumped out by the bilge and ballast pumps. The difficulties in the way of improvements were of a particularly formidable character but they were surmounted by the employment of v special electrical and mechanical .devices. In the enormous amount of cutting necessary the oxyacetylene process was used. Practically the vessel was dismantled; boilers and funnel were removed in the course of the construction, and the ship's side-valves, weighing a ton apiece, were taken out. As a result of the alterations the measurement of the Olympic has been increased'' by 1000 tons, the present estimate being 46,358 tons, and the cost has been nearly £300,000. A new cafe and reception room have been constructed, and additional accommodation furnished for passengers, while on the middle deck there is now established a. series of clog kennels.