MOTOR-DRIVEN SHIPS.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 4395, 26 November 1912, Page 3

MOTOR-DRIVEN SHIPS.

Tlie type of ship described by Mr Max Pemberton some seventeen years ago in his romance “The Iron Pirate,” seems likely to he translated in the near future from the realms of sensational fiction to a sphere of commonplace actualities. The first big motor-driven ship, however, is a steady-going freight and. passenger vessel, the “Christian X.,” of the Hamburg-Ameriean line, not a swift cruiser. The “Christian X.,” which successfully completed her maiden voyage from Hamburg to Havana at the end of last month, is a vessel of 10,200 tons displacement, 370 ft. long, and with a beam of 53ft. >Sho is driven by twin Diesel oil engines, of a combined indicated horse- {lower of 2500. Her average speed on her first voyage was 11.1 knots, maintained over a total mileage of 1627. The ship carries 1000 tons of oil in her double bottom. She left Hamburg with a supply of 470 tons and reached Havana with 200 tons, or an average consumption of about ten tons per day at full speed. The vessel can carry 1000 tons more cargo than a steamer of the same tonnage using coal fuel can, and her engine room staff consists of nine men instead of the twenty-four who would he required in an ordinary steamship of the same, power. Although some very had weather was encountered, and the pro|X'ller,s were frequently lifted clean out of the water, the engines ran with great regularity and without a single stop (hiring the seventeen days of the voyage. A photograph of the' ship published in a recent issue of the Scientific American presents a curiously incomplete appearance. The unfinished impression given by the absence of the towering funnel, which should normally he the most striking feature of a vessel of lie rsizo and build, is accent tinted by the fact that the three masts are very short, and stumpy. If, as the Scientific American predicts, the, oil motor is destined in the near future to drive the steam engine from the seas, the shortcomings in appearance of the new type of vessel will soon oeiuso to exist, for all eyas wilt have become accustomed to the absence of smokestacks from vessels of great tonnage.