AN ARMORED CITY AFLOAT.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LI, Issue 16806, 12 August 1925, Page 2

AN ARMORED CITY AFLOAT.

Luxuries of a first class

HOTEL,

(By Frank Marion, who represented the Sydney Sun on the West. Virginia during the cruise to Australia.) . Over thirty-three thousand tons of her, miles and miles of alley ways to walk through, flights and flights of gangways, depths that seem to go right down to the bottom of tho sea, heights to climb to make you di?zy, a tromendous bulk of ironmongery that cost £11,000,000 to put together—and that’s the UrS.S. West, Virginia. Apd there arc others like her in the Fleet —spprtipg models with their clipper bows, and gaping from their turrets the mouths of their eight 16-inch gups and the smaller guns sprinkled all around; the business side of them. The West Virginia is an armoured city afloat. You could got lost in her and be as hard .to find as a pricked bubble. You can go through her and feel like an explorer, finding new and more wonderful things to chronicle every moment. / She is complete in herself. Everything you cqji think of is confined in her vast spaces'. Every modern convenience is there and also every modern inconvenience, 'Jake a run over her. The quarter-dock, sacred to the officers, is a wide expanse of white docking broken here and there with the grey outlines of the batches or the capstans or the gangway coverings. Walk a few times around it ami you have done a mile. Look astern and you can almost touch the sea. Step down the gangway and into the ward room mess. All the comforts of a modern hotel are here —except the hotel. A player piano, that, judging from the use it gets, must be armpr- ‘ plated like the ship. And a gramophone, just ns hardy—the sort, of instnupofit that copies up singing no •matter how hard you smite it. A whole library of records and piano rolls to suit nil musical tastes. Across the alley way the kitchens—visions in white tiling and white enamelled cooking ranges fired with electricity to make any housewife green with envy. Then through the simple green curtains a glimpse of the AflmiraUs quarters —plain but homely. Below again, and iuto the staterooms. Nothing cramped here in the way of space. Rig rooms splendidly furnished, with pressed steel ffi 1 ’ nituTC camouflaged as wood beautifully grained. Wonderful furniture that yon can always rely upon to work when you want it to. The drawers never stick, the water always runs. The electric fan always whirls when you switch it on and the radiator always, radiates when you say so. Electric lights everywhere —on the writing table, over the couch, alongside the bunk, over the dressing-minor; and there nre two main lights on the ceiling. Switch them all on and you feel that you have illuminated the fleet. Everything solid nnd substantial. » Even down to the electyic bell push. Looks good enough to stop the ship. Press it nnd see what happens. Instantly, ns if the other end were tied on tp him, n polite little Philippino steward: “Yds sah?” “Bring mo the moon.” “Yns sail.” “And a sprinkle of stars!” << Yas sail!! Nuttin ’ els’ sail?’ ’ Anyway you feel that if you really wanted them he'd got therm Then the roomy showfi-baths, visions of white tiles, and nickel-plated fittings that. Ajjierica nnd the Americans have specialised in. The first shower on bonrd ship is like your first kiss—something to remember. You start in with all the confidence of the amateur,"armed to the teeth with a bath-robe, a cake, of soap, and a towel, and leave like a boiled lobster, inquiring "the nearest route to the hospital ship. There are more wheels t.o. WP*k on these showers than there arc on the cab of a railway engine. Every wheel you turn makes the watpr hotter aad hotter. And .there is about 601 b prps'sure behind it—hundreds of red-hot needles to make you realise that washing yourself is a serious business. It is! There arc no end of other comforts. The ship’s tailor will turn you out a r garment in no time, nnd the cobbler works in a shop with enough mnchincry around him to build 4 rootor Then there is the barber’s saloon. Six chairs and plepty of waiting. Sailors sepm to fi}l in thpir spare time getting .their hair cut. It is a hobby with them, almost a passion. They treat one another to hair-cuts as if they were drinks. They’ll get their hair cut on the slightest pretext. A rainy morning? Oh well, let’s have a hair’ cut. A sunshiny morning? Not v a bad day for a hair cut is it? Havo one with me. Then there is the candy shop which sella anything from a cake of soap to a camera. The prices are ridiculously cheap. Packets of twenty high'fdass cigarettes cost threepence, and ■when a sailor hands cigars around, they ’re always Coronas. * A cake of soap which costs you n shilling in Sydney is passed out over tho counter for four cents, and even t,)ion they growl about the high cost, of living. * 200 TELEPHONE NUMBERS. But your .real “kick” comes when you get your laundry bill. In Honolulu two shirts, nnd half n dozen collars and two singlets and a few handkerchiefs come to twelve shillings, •' and they don’t- seem to consider 'that vou have left, a deposit on the purchase price of the’ business either. But on shipbonr.d-’-blnnkets fid, pillow-slips id, table-cloths 2R stiff collars Id, suit of pyjamas 2d, bath robe 4d, • sheets 2d, shirts 2)cl, socks Id, white flannel trousers 2sd, suit-pressing fid, and vou can’t take the slightest, exception'to the quality of the Inundrying. This is inserted with the idea of proving that wonders never cense on shipboard, and-not with nny intention of starting a pogrom among laundry men in port. Which is all by the way on n warf There are the mysteries of the machine rooms, the turrets, the con- ' ning towers and the navigator’s bridge. The guiding hand is electrici ity coupled with precision. Wherever a cog fits, into a cog it fits like a glove and gears whirl around with A as much-noise ns the gears in a lady » wristlet watch. The machinery is a f . ‘delight—acres and acres of that P<>-_ ished machined steel . siiifnco that . ; gladden the heart of the engineer, i Even the engine rooms are pictures of i - whiteness, and-tho draught system reduces the heat, even standing nlongg ' sido the whitc-lufi. oil furnaces, to a minimum. _ / . I- These ships are electrically driven. From the boilers, heated by the oii I furnaces, the turbines uto fed. They I are coupled up with the huge gencrI ntors, which in turn drive the electric I motors. To these the screws arc con-

uectod. It might appear that, there is a big waste of power in not driving the screws direct from the turbines. But tjie turbines are most efficient at high speed, aqd the screws at about one hundred revolutions per minute. Consequently, if connected direct with the turbines, t.hpy would have to be: Reared down, with the resultant loss of po\ypr, to say nothing of the depreciation from wear and tear on the gears. Electricity does the gearing down from the generator to the motor, which rpYblves at about pjfiOty revolutions to give eleven knots. And this has boen found to be the most efficient method. . Any order that is issued verbally as heard simultaneously all over tho ship. The announcer spooks into a central transmitter like the announcer in a broadcasting radio studio and by telephone loud speakers his voice is turned into hundreds of voices. It. is absolutely uncanny, when, just, ns you are ready to take that last two inin-ute nap in the morning bunk, quite prepared not to complain if it stretches out ijito two hours, to hear q hp-psli grating yoice coming from nowhere into the privacy of vour state-room, ordering:— “All hands to the quarter-deck.” And he says it twice. In case you didn’t hear him the first time. Qf course there is a complete telephone exchange on the ship. The hello-boy handles just on two hundred numbers.