"Boilers?" continued Munroe, in answer to a question. "We dinna have boilers to blow up and smash things to smithereens. The steam is made just as fast as we need it. It's as flexible as an auld glove. If a tube blaws out there's only a bit hiss and the body at the levers cuts it out. It shows on an indicator. Twa-three years ago they put in a thermostat to automatically control the pressure and temperature, but the elements in the gadgets were always warping and ganging wrang, and hand control is certain.
"But it's no' like the auld times, when a trained engineer was an engineer. There's nae wairk tae be done. It's a drawing-room life. If anything gaes wrang, it's—'Mister Munroe, the shore engineers are coming aboord.'"
He unscrewed an engine-room hatch. It was beautifully fitted, so that not a crack would show on the hull when it was closed. We stood together, with our heads out, and could look fore and aft along the hull and out on the snowy expanse of the lower plane. Immediately behind the trailing edge of the lower wing were two stream-lined funnels, protruding above the hull about a foot.
"She's twa hunder and forty feet from nose to tip of tail," Munroe told me. "She's licensed to weigh twa hunder tons when fully loaded. That's eleven and a half poonds a horse-power. Wing surface? Fifty-one thousand square feet. That's maybe loaded to eight pounds a square foot.
"Four hunder and fifty feet she measures from wing-tip to wing-tip. You'll notice there's no wires exposed. And you'll notice maybe that each wing-spar gets smaller as it goes out. That's the advantage of being big. Your small machine has a wing-spar big enough to take the greatest load all the way out. Vara wasteful. But we're deesigned with tapering wing-spars, steel girders they are, and so save weight and head resistance. Cost more? Yara likely, but consider the speed.
"Weight? Ye'll have played aboot with hunder-ton steel ten years ago, but we wairk with five-hunder-ton steel. Five times as light as aluminium for the same strength, it is.
WHITE LINE
F·B "Swift" and F·B "Swallow"
200 Tons.
Six Propellers - 30.000 h.p. length 240 Feet.
PLAN of ACCOMMODATION.
"You're looking at the props. There's six of them, driven by shaft and gears, a smart job—the laddie that cut them was nae fule. No engines out in the draught to make head reesistance. Murad steel they're made of, wood never stood up to the rain. Low speed, high efficiency, variable pitch, they are; absorbing five thousand horse-power each. I remember reading in an old report where a big expert said one propeller could only absorb twa thousand horse, but he was wrang.