STEAMERS IN COLLISION. ELECTRIC SHIPS COMING.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 4768, 16 January 1918, Page 5

STEAMERS IN COLLISION.

ELECTRIC SHIPS COMING.

AMERICAN VESSEL SINKING

United Press Association—Copyright Australian and N.Z. Cable Association NEW YORK, Jan. 14. The steamer Texan is reported to he sinking at sea. A vessel arriving at an Atlantic port reports having picked up a wireless message from the steamer Texan as follows:. “We were struck amidships. Have sixty-three men lowering lifeboats. Good-bye. No more.” (Received Jan. 15, 5.5 p.m.) It is now ascertained that the Texan, which wirelessed that she was sinking at sea, had been in collision with another steamship,

“The electric ship is no longer a d' eam, hut a reality, and I should; not be surprised to find within a few years of the close .of the war every new vessel of any size driven, steered, reversed, or turned merely by the pressing of a series of buttons on the bridge. “Introduction of the electrical link between the turbine and the propeller was first suggested by the Electrical Times in 1906, continued, the editor of that paper, in an interview with the Daily News representative.

“The application of this principle will enable ships to he run with the highest efficiency at an even speed, permit marine engineers more, liberty of design, and yield! proportionately greater cargo space than the present cumbrous form of machinery allows. No special turbine will be necessary to reverse a ship, because with the electric drive it will be able to go quite easily astern without any reversing set. .Gables will replace the heavy steam pipes, the long propeller shaft will be unnecessary, aipi fans, pumps, heating, lighting, .and cooking apparatus, together with scores of other auxiliaries, will be run by tile same plant that drives the ship. Electrical generating sets, moreover, can be distributed throughout! the ship in water-tight compartments, so that if one set breaks down the .vessel oan continue its voyage efficiently by overloading the remaining sets while the repairs are being executed at leisure. “Mr. W. P. Durntall, the English inventor of ' the Paragon system of power-transmission, was the. first man to design an 'electrically-driven ship. This was built on the Clyde, but our Admiralty and private shipbuilders looked;' askance at the new idea at that time. The system was loft to American genius to develop as a commercial proposition, in which form.it first appeared in the electrically-driv-en collier Jupiter. Press reports from America, published also in. this country, disclose the fact that the system is now being installed in the battleships and battle-cruisers under construction for the U.S. Navy. British shipbuilders, too, now have their eyes on the possihiliti.se of the electrical drive for big liners and merchant ships.”