ATLANTIC RECORD

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17410, 7 November 1930, Page 7

ATLANTIC RECORD

CUNARD’S NEW LINERS THE INSURANCE PROBLEM 0 0 VERNMEXT A SSI ST A NOE (British Official Wireless.) Ree. 10 a.m. RUGBY, Nov. 6. The terms of an agreement between the Board of Trade and the Cunard Steamship Co., Ltd., for the insurance of one, and possibly two, large passenger vessels of exceptional value, which the company proposes to build, are issued. The value of these 1 vessels will, it is anticipated, be about £4,1500,000 each, and uncertainty exists as to whether the normal insurance market will be able to absorb the whole amount of the insurance, required. The. effect of the agreement, if entered into would be that the Government would undertake to provide insurance against both, construction and marine risks in respect of the.first vessel to be built by the company insofar as the ordinary insurance market is unable to do so. The. company would be required to exhaust the open market before calling oil the Board of Trade to make up ,the deficiency. The agreement also provides for the insurance of a' second vessel on similar terms, provided-that the Board of Trade is satisfied that her keel will be laid wUhiu.six years from the execution of the agreement. C.P.R. PLAN TO BEAT BREMEN SHIP-AND-TRAIN DASH LONDON, Sept. 3. Partly through the perfection of a British engineering invention, the blue riband of the Atlantic may be re-won from Germany within a few months. The new greyhound challenger of the Bremen and Europa time records is the Canadian Pacific Empress of Britain, the third largest British-built liner afloat, which was launched last June by the Prince of Wales. She is now being fitted in tho Clyde preparatory to her maiden voyage next spring, but a certain change in the original plans for her construction will enable the C.P.R. to deposit passengers in New York hours before any other liner.

Although her speed was at first to be limited to a little more than 24 knots, the fitting of a new type of water-tube boiler will bring the speed of the Empress of Britain within racing distance of the 27.0 knots with which rhe German liner Europa. captured the Atlantic record from the Mauretania.

This, however, is but one part of the scheme of her owners to make the Empress of Britain the Empress of the Atlantic as well. Although it is 3091 sea miles from Southampton to Now York —a distance covered by the Europa in four days 17 hours —it is only 2708 miles to Quebec, which a 27knot liner could do in a little over four da vs.

A boat express at Quebec would then carry on the race, and Now York would be reached in about 14 hours. There are no boat connections at the New York dock's, and the Empress of Britain is already assured of the time record for all points west of Buffalo — which practically means all the largest cities in the western part of the Continent, including Chicago and San Francisco.

The water-tube boilers- which are being fitted have already supplanted older types in the large Canadian Pacific liners, effecting as much as 25 per cent, economy, but this is the first attempt to divert the superior efficiency of the all-British invention to speed.