ROTOR SHIPS

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1779, 6 July 1926, Page 6

ROTOR SHIPS

MAY BE OF VALUE. The sentimentalists who saw in the coming of Herr Flettner’s rotor ship last spring the final doom of (the tall spdrs and snowy canvas to which their affection clings have had their fears revived in these last few days (says the Manchester Guardian). For 4 that extraordinary craft the Buckau, now renamed the Baden Baden,' is steadily making her way across the hroad Atlantic as comfortably as any brig, barque, schooner or steam tramp. Despite a 50 knot gale at, one point, she has averaged 200 miles a day for her first 10 days, and if she maintains this' pace New York will soon be grappling as vigorously with a practical application of the “Magnus principle” as did Leith when the portent of the whirling towers set the Forth agog a year ago.

Sightseers at Battery tPoint will be able to satisfy themselves of the highly interesting fact—which, whatever else he has achieved, Herr Flettner has put beyond dispute—that a cylinder spinning in a beam wind at four times the velocity of the wind will extract from it as much energy as will a sail area 16 times the size. The world, moreover, will be better able to judge of the main issue involved in the invention —whether the help enlisted froih the wind l>y*the use of the rotors, with its resultant economy in fuel expenditure, will justify the cost of their installation and the sacrifice of the deck and hold space necessary to contain them. If ’that test is finally satisfied we may see a race of rotor ships- beside which the 600 ton Baden Baden is a pigmy, for there has been talk in Germany of applying the principle to vessels of as much as 8000 tons burden, ' with spinning towiers over 200 feet high—a dimension that compares with even a notable factory chimney. And in face of that amazing portent the pale but comely ghosts of the famous tea clippers of last century may well flee our waters for ever.