LINER LIFTED.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19501, 9 June 1925, Page 4

LINER LIFTED.

CROWNING TRIUMPH ON MECHANICAL MAGIC. If you had visilcd Southampton recently, ignorant of the day’s events, you would have thought yourself the victim of an hallucination (savs the Southampton correspondent of the Daily Chronicle). Approaching the city you would have seen a ghost ship, magically suspended above the surface of the hidden waters. Her windowed walls rose higher than the highest buildings, and her funnels out-topped the tallest spires. Having seen her, however, a few hours earlier, I can testify that this was no phantom ship creute'd from the sunset’s magic She was lying then, in all her pride and strength, iii the Queen Dock, and I knew her for the White Star liner Majestic, the world’s largest vessel. Dy the magic ot modern mechanics that enormous weight of iron and steel was lifted five- and a-half feet above tbc level of the sea. Within four hours from leaving her berth in leash to nine tugs, the world's biggest ship was standing high ana dry in the world's largest floating dock, built for the Southern Hallway Company. A third world’s record was added to these two. The Majestic's holds were emptioa, but even so she had a displacement weight of 58,000 tons, and that is the greatest burden ever lifted by human agency. When the Majestic had been coaxed within the awaiting dock, which is itself a fifth of a mile long, she rested on a gigantic pontoon. Then came an operation that was wonderful to witness, but impossible to describe, because in it are combined a hundred marvels of engineering. Briefly, let it be said that in the course of four hours 80,000 tons of water were pumped cut of the pontoon by the agency of U elcctrically-drivcn pumps in 14 power stations •on the hollow steel walls. Imperceptibly to the eye the dock rose, carrying the ship up with it, until fhe pontoon deck was completely out of the water, and resting on it, high and dry, delicately but securely poised in her cradle, was the Majestic. From the shores thousands of people watched the raising of the liner. A specially interested spectator on the bridge was Sir Bertram Hayes, tbc Majestic’s former captain, who hail journeyed from Liverpool.