GIANTS OF THE SEAS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 25 June 1927, Page 11

GIANTS OF THE SEAS

Si HIPS are built specially for certain trades 0 and particular routes. Vessels con- ' structed irrespective of their proposed route are never satisfactory on any route. Ships built to pass through the tropics, like those launched for the Blue Star Line serving South America, are constructed and equipped on entirely different plans from those of a North Atlantic liner. The designer must know the ports at which the ship will call to replenish, if necessary, her fuel and stores. He must know whether she is destined for a cold or a tropical voyage, for comfort and luxury in different climates demand entirely different types of vessels (writes an engineer). These details known, the designer puts on paper what he has evolved in his brain. lie makes careful scale drawings of the ship that is to be, and. the completed plans are then transferred in chalk at full scale for height and width to the vast black-painted floor of the mould loft, a large shed adjoining the designer’s office in the shipyard. Here the lines are “faired” by long strips of wood that bend into shape for use as guides to curvature of the frames. The particulars are then returned to the designer, who makes his final calculations and gives the word for work to proceed in the yard. In the mould loft every plate of the ship is represented by a template or pattern in light wood or paper. Every rivet hole is shown, and every curve and twist is there that will appear in the acual plate. -These templates are the fitters’ guides to laying off upon the steel the various plates and parts ready to be cut and pierced for fixing in position in the vessel’s ' fabric. The keel, or backbone, of the ship is laid 'upon specially-arranged baulks of timber at an even slope of half an inch to the foot downwards the water’s edge in a place where there is sufficient depth to float the completed vessel. On the keel itself is built an inner keel, or “skeleton,” joined every three or four fee! to strong transverse steel walls called floors. The whole is covered by a real floor, such as landsmen know it. and these enclosed spaces form the double bottom, which serves the two-fold purpose of carrying water and saving the ship from disaster if the outer bottom is damaged. The liners of the Blue Star Line use this for oil-fuel also.

The double-bottom tanks having been completed, the frames of the ship are fitted to it by means of cargo triangular brackets. Frames are the ribs of the ships, and it is upon them

BIRTH OF A GREAT LINER

FROM LAY-DOWN TO LAUNCH

that the steel shell plating of the hull is built. While the frames are being set up the stem and sternpost of the vessel are erectedWhen the skeleton framework is in position, the whole is covered over with the steel plates thgt have been forged according to the patterns of the templates, with all rivet holes punched ready for the smiths to fit them to the frames. In the old days when ships were small and the plates thin, riveting was done by hand, but nowadays, when plates an inch and a quarter in thickness have to be joined together, and rivets, in consequence, have to be bigger, the work has to be done by hydraulic or pneumatic “riveting guns.” Apart from the actual trades employed in the building yard, thousands of men are hard at work in many other branches of industry preparing the multitudinous things with which Hie up-to-date steamer must be fitted before she can proceed to sea. As soon as the plates are securely riveted, they are caulked to render them completely watertight. Painters follow the caulkers and soon render the bull presentable and impervious to water. While the skin—as the plating is called — is being fitted, the decks, both steel and wood, are put on and caulked. The ship’s propellors and rudder are then added. And now comes the critical time when the whole fabric, which has taken so long to build, must be launched. Heavy baulks of timber are placed on both sides of the kerb to form the “standing ways” and are laid right out into deep water so that they carry the weight of the ship till she is properly water-borne. This is to avoid the risk of breaking her back. On these standing ways are erected “launching ways,” enormous cradles that will support the vessel when the staging and supports round her are removed, and that will steady her as she slips down the thickly-greased standing ways. On the day of the launch the weight of the ship is transferred from the keel blocks to the launching ways by hundreds of stout wedges hammered in beneath the cradle. All supports are removed except the “dog shores,”which hold her from moving till the last moment. The signal is given and the person who stands sponsor to the ship breaks a bottle of wine on her bows, pronouncing her name; The “dog shores” are knocked away and the mighty mass of steel, worth many hundreds of thousands of pounds, moves —slowly at first, but gathering speed every ,/second —till she glides gracefully into the water.