“Turbinia.”
Captain Williamson, the well-known steamer manager on the Clyde, was the first to order a turbine-propelled boat for commercial purposes, this being the steamer King Edward, built in 1901. She gave such excellent results that the Queen Alexandra was ordered. The South Eastern and Chatham Company was the first railway company to order a turbine steamer, The Queen, 310 feet long and of 1676 tons gross, with engines of 7500 horse-power. The first ocean liners fitted with turbines were the Allan liners Victorian and Virginian, built in 1904, each of about 10,754 gross tonnage and having turbine engines of about 12,000 horse-power. The Cunard Line built a turbine steamer in the following year, the Carmania, with turbines of 21,000 horse-power and of 19,524 tons gross. So satisfactory, apparently, was the experiment that the Cunard Line next ordered the Lusitania and Mauretania with turbine engines of 70,000 horse-power each.
After the two torpedo vessels already mentioned, the Admiralty ordered the Velox and Eden, which had additional engines for obtaining economical results at low speeds. Then came the third-class cruiser Amethyst, and comparative trials with sister vessels fitted with reciprocating engines showed the superior economy of the Amethyst’s engines. Next the Dreadnought was fitted with turbine engines. Another conclusive proof of the superiority of the turbine was afforded by the steamer Princesse Elisabeth on the Ostend and Dover service, which in her first year averaged 24 knots as against the 22 knots of the Princesse Clementine and Marie Henriette on an average coal consumption per trip of 23·01 tons, compared with their 24·05 and 23·82 tons respectively. The turbine boat also does the trip in about 15 per cent. less time than the other two, or, “to reduce the turbine boat to the displacement and speed of the paddle-boats, and assuming that the indicated horse-power varies as the cube of the speed, the mean consumption of the Princesse Elisabeth would be about 17 tons as against 24 tons in the paddle-boats, thereby showing a saving of over 25 per cent.” Many other vessels have been fitted with turbine machinery, including the royal yacht.
The multiple propellers tried in some of the earlier vessels were found to be less satisfactory than single propellers on each shaft.
The first in which a combination of reciprocating and turbine engines was installed was the Otaki by Denny, for the New Zealand Shipping Company.
The “Otaki” (New Zealand Shipping Co.).
CHAPTER XI
STEAM-POWER AND THE NAVY
The steam vessels first built for the Navy were hardly worth calling warships and were of little or no value for fighting purposes. The first steam-propelled vessel in the Navy was the Monkey, of 210 tons, built at Rotherhithe in 1820 and fitted with engines of 80 nominal horse-power by Boulton and Watt. She had two cylinders of about 35¹⁄₂ inches diameter and 3 feet 6 inches piston-stroke. The Active, of 80 nominal horse-power, was launched by the same firm two years later, and in 1823 Messrs. Maudslay began with the Lightning that connection with the Royal Navy which was maintained as long as the firm was in existence. Up to 1840 about seventy steam vessels were added to the Government fleet, the majority of which were given side-lever engines and flue boilers with a steam-pressure of about 4 lb. to the square inch above the air-pressure. All these vessels were chiefly used for towage and general purposes, including mail carriage when necessary, and not as warships. There was a gradual improvement in the size of the vessels, and in 1832 the Rhadamanthus was constructed by Maudslay, Sons, and Field with engines of 220 nominal horse-power and 400 indicated. Her machinery weighed 275 tons.