We are going to be left behind!

The Board of Invention and Research, of which I was President, after much persistence obtained the loan of a small Laboratory at South Kensington, greatly aided by Professor Dalby, F.R.S., for research purposes as regards the Internal Combustion Engine; but its capabilities were quite inadequate. Then the President of the Council (Earl Curzon) was to undertake the whole question of Research on a great and worthy scale, and I got a most kind letter from him. It ended with the letter!

In this connection I have had wonderful support from Sir Marcus Samuel, who staked his all on Oil and the Oil Engine. Where should we have been in this War but for this Prime Mover? I’ve no doubt he is an oil millionaire now, but that’s not the point. Oil is one of the things that won us the War. And when he was Lord Mayor of London he was about the only man who publicly supported me when it was extremely unfashionable to do so.

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Oil is the very soul of future Sea Fighting. Hence my interest in it, and though not intending to work again, yet my consuming passion for oil and the oil engine made me accept the Chairmanship of a Royal Commission on Oil and the Oil Engine when Mr. Churchill and Mr. Asquith found me at Naples in May, 1912.

I have come to the conclusion that about the best thing I ever did was the following exuberant outburst over Oil and the Oil Engine. I observe it was printed in November 1912, written “currente calamo,” and now on reading it over I would not alter a word. I am only aghast at the astounding stupidity of the British Shipbuilder and the British Engineer in being behind every country in the development of motor ships.

Oil and the Oil Engine (1912).

I.—With two similar Dreadnoughts oil gives 3 knots more speed—that is if ships are designed to burn oil only instead of oil and coal—and speed is everything.
II.—The use of oil fuel increases the strength of the British Navy 33 per cent., because it can re-fuel at sea off the enemy’s Harbours. Coal necessitates about one-third of the Fleet being absent re-fuelling at a base (in case of war with Germany) some three or four hundred miles off!—i.e., some six or eight hundred miles unnecessary expenditure of fuel and wear and tear of machinery and men.
III.—Oil for steam-raising reduces the present engine and boiler room personnel some 25 per cent., and for Internal Combustion Engines would perhaps reduce the personnel over 60 per cent. This powerfully affects both economy and discipline.
IV.—Oil tankers are in profusion on every sea and as England commands the Ocean (she must command the Ocean to live!!) she has peripatetic re-fuelling stations on every sea and every oil tanker’s position known every day to a yard! Before very long there will be a million tons of oil on the various oceans in hundreds of oil tankers. The bulk of these would be at our disposal in time of war. Few or none could reach Germany.
V.—The Internal Combustion Engine with one ton of oil does what it takes four tons of coal to do![11] And having no funnels or smoke is an indescribable fighting asset! (Always a chance of smoke in an oil steam-raising vessel where of course the funnels which disclose a ship such an immense distance off are obligatory. Each enemy’s ship spells her name to you by her funnels as they appear on the horizon, while you are unseen!)
VI.—The armament of the Internal Combustion Ship is not hampered by funnels, so can give all-round fire, an inestimable advantage because the armament can all be placed in the central portion of the Hull with all-round fire, and giving the ship better seaworthy qualities by not having great weights in the extremities, as obligatory where you have funnels and boilers.
VII.—But please imagine the blow to British prestige if a German warship with Internal Combustion Propulsion is at sea before us and capable of going round the World without re-fuelling! What an Alabama!!! What an upset to the tremblers on the brink who are hesitating to make the plunge for Motor Battleships!
According to a reliable foreign correspondent, the keel of a big Oil-Engine Warship for the German Navy is to be laid shortly. Krupp has a design for a single cylinder of 4,000 H.P.! He has had a six-cylinder engine of 2,000 H.P., each cylinder successfully running for over a year.
VIII.—Anyhow, it must be admitted that the burning of oil to raise steam is a roundabout way of getting power! The motor car and the aeroplane take little drops of oil and explode them in cylinders and get all the power required without being bothered with furnaces or boilers or steam engines, so we say to the marine engineer, “Go and do thou likewise!”
The sailor’s life on the 70,000 H.P. coal using Lion is worse than in any ship in the service owing to the constant coalings.
It’s an economic waste of good material to keep men grilling in a baking fire hole at unnecessary labour and use 300 men when a dozen or so would suffice!
Certainly oil at present is not a cheap fuel! but it is cheap when the advantages are taken into consideration. In an Internal Combustion Engine, according to figures given by Lord Cowdray, his Mexican oil would work out in England, when freights are normal, as equivalent to coal at twelve to fifteen shillings a ton!
Oil does not deteriorate by keeping. Coal does. You can store millions of tons of oil without fear of waste or loss of power, and England has got to store those millions of tons, though this reserve may be gradually built up. The initial cost would be substantial but the investment is gilt-edged! We must and can face it. Si vis pacem para bellum!
You can re-fuel a ship with oil in minutes as compared with hours with coal!
At any moment during re-fuelling the oil-engine ship can fight—the coal-driven ship can’t—she is disorganized—the whole crew are black as niggers and worn out with intense physical exertion! In the oil-driven ship one man turns a tap!
It’s criminal folly to allow another pound of coal on board a fighting ship!—or even in a cargo-ship either!—Krupp has a design for a cargo-ship with Internal Combustion Engines to go 40,000 (forty thousand) miles without re-fuelling! It’s vital for the British Fleet and vital for no other Fleet, to have the oil engine. That’s the strange thing! And if only the Germans knew, they’d shoot their Dr. Diesel like a dog!
Sir Charles Parsons and others prefer small units. It is realised in regard to the multiplication of small units (as the Lilliputians tied up Gulliver) that though there is no important reason why cylinders shall not be multiplied on the same shaft yet the space required will be very large—the engines thus spreading themselves in the fore and aft direction—but here comes in the ingenuity of the Naval Constructor and the Marine Engineer in arranging a complete fresh adaptation of the hull space and forthwith immense fighting advantages will accrue! Far from being an insuperable objection it’s a blessing in disguise, for with a multiplicity of internal combustion engines there undoubtedly follows increased safety from serious or total breakdown, provided that suitable means are provided for disconnecting any damaged unit and also for preventing in case of such failure any damage to the rest of the system. The storage of oil fuel lends itself to a remarkable new disposition of the whole hull space. Thus a battleship could carry some five or six thousand tons of oil in her double bottoms—sufficient to go round the earth without r-fuelling. The “Non-Pareil” (being the French for the “Incomparable”) will carry over 6,000 tons of oil in her double bottoms, with an extra double bottom below those carrying the oil. This is equal to 24,000 tons of coal!
This new arrangement of the hull space permits some dozen motor boats being carried in a central armoured pit (where the funnels used to be). These 60-feet motor boats would carry 21-inch Torpedoes and have a speed of 40 knots. Imagine these hornets being let loose in a sea fight! The 21-inch Torpedo which they carry goes 5 miles! And the silhouette of an Internal Combustion Battleship is over 30 per cent. less than any living or projected Battleship in the target offered to the enemy’s fire.
IX.—Finally:
To be first in the race is everything!
Just consider our immense gains in having been first with the water-tube boiler! First with the turbine! First with the 13½-inch gun! Just take this last as an illustration! We shall have 16 ships armed with the 13½-inch gun before the Germans have a single ship with anything bigger than the 12-inch, and the 13½-inch is as superior to the 12-inch as the 12-inch is to a peashooter.
And yet we hesitate to plunge with a Motor Battleship! Why boggle at this plunge when we have plunged before, every time with success?
People say Internal Combustion Propulsion in a hundred thousand horse-power Dreadnought is similarly impossible! “Wait and see!”—The “Non-Pareil” is coming along!
The rapid development of the oil engine is best illustrated by the fact that a highly influential and rich German syndicate have arranged for six passenger steamers for the Atlantic and Pacific Trade, of 22 knots speed and 36,000 H.P. with nine of Krupp’s cylinders of 4,000 H.P. each on three shafts.[12]
There need be no fear of an oil famine because of the immense sure oil areas recently brought to notice in Canada, Persia, Mesopotamia and elsewhere. The British oil area in Trinidad alone will be able to more than supply all the requirements of the British Navy. Assuming the present coal requirements of the Navy at 1½ million tons annually, then less than half a million tons of oil would suffice when the whole British Navy is oil engined, and, as recently remarked by the greatest oil magnate, this amount would be a bagatelle compared with the total output of oil, which he expects before many years to reach an output of a hundred million tons a year in consequence of the great demand for developing its output and the discovery of new oil areas and the working of shale deposits.

We turned coal-burning Battleships that were building in November, 1914, into oilers, with great increase of efficiency and speed.

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