Marine Engineers

[Stanley]

The ex P&O liner Beltana. Used by Australia as a troop carrier to Europe in the Great War.

[Stanley]

RMS Mongolia, used as a troop ship by the Australians. Torpedoed on 21 July 1918. Could be the ship my father sailed on from Darwin to Sydney before the war.

[Stanley]

Australian volunteers boarding the Beltana at Brisbane in 1917.

[Stanley]

The Beltana as a P&O ship. Digging for pics of her reminded me of the troopship which carried me from Harwich to the Hook and back four times in the 1950s, the Empire Parkeston, a very fast ship, I think she did 15 knots.



Empire Parkeston was a 5,556-GRT troopship which was built by Cammell Laird & Co Ltd, Birkenhead. Launched in 1930 as Prince Henry for Canadian National Steamships. Sold in 1937 to Clark Steamship Co, Quebec. Refitted and renamed North Star. Purchased in 1939 by the Royal Canadian Navy and converted by Burrard Dry Dock co, Vancouver to auxiliary cruiser HMCS Prince Henry. On 2 April 1941, Prince Henry intercepted German blockade runners Hermonthis and München 200 nautical miles (370 km) west of Callao, Peru. Both ships were scuttled by their crews. Converted in 1944 to a landing ship and used in Operation Overlord and Operation Dragoon. On Christmas Day 1944 she took to Corfu 1400 evacuees fleeing the Greek Civil War in Preveza, followed by two more trips with another 3000 people in total. In 1945 she took Italian and Russian ex-prisoners of war to Taranto, and 247 New Zealanders to Alexandria, on the first leg of their journey home. She escorted a convoy from Gibraltar to the UK in March 1945 and was paid off as a Canadian ship on 15 April 1945 as the RCN no longer had the manpower to operate her. A Royal Navy crew took over and she sailed for Wilhelmshaven in late 1945 as HMS Prince Henry, to serve as an accommodation and headquarters ship. She was transferred to the British Ministry of Transport (MoT) for $500,000 in 1946 and renamed Empire Parkeston. Used as a troopship between Harwich and the Hook of Holland. Scrapped in February 1962 in Spezia, Italy.

[Stanley]

SS Viper was built at the Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co.'s yard in Govan in 1906 and was 315 feet in length. She had three steam turbines powering the triple screws, making her one of the company's fastest ships with a top speed of 22 knots. The steamer worked the Ardrossan-Belfast route from 1906 to 1914. She served as a troop carrier in the English Channel during the First World War but returned to operation on her pre-war route in 1919. However the unrest in Ireland resulted in the decline in passenger traffic with Scotland and Viper was sold to the Isle of Man Steam Packet Co in 1920 and renamed Snaefell. (Thanks to Rollofhonour.com for the information)
This was the ship which carried both my father and my Uncle Stan across to France.

[Stanley]

Thanks to the Strong Island website for this splendid picture of HMS Vanguard in 1960. A sad story, Britain's last major battleship, she was leaving Portsmouth en route to Faslane for scrapping but ran aground. Finally scrapped in 1962.
I have an interest in her because if I remember rightly she was equipped with the large guns from HMS King George V and in the 1920s my father helped make the barrels for these guns when he worked at Vickers in Trafford Park Manchester. Am I right in saying they were recycled?

[Stanley]

A massive piece of marine engineering. The drum that carried and laid the pipe for PLUTO (Pipeline under the ocean). This supplied the invasion forces with fuel during the first stages of the liberation of Europe in 1944.

[deebee]

Stanley,
The barrels on large naval guns had a surprisingly short life, they could fire around 200 rounds before wearing out. It was possible to re-line them and the Admirality maintained a central store with spare barrels which were either new or refurbished. I have read that it took longer to make the barrels than it did to build the rest of the ship and that this was a major bottleneck in the pre Great War dreadnought race. There were only three or four firms able to make the barrels and I understand some ships were completed with guns removed from, or originally made for other ships.

db

[chinatyke]

Stanley,
The barrels on large naval guns had a surprisingly short life, they could fire around 200 rounds before wearing out.
db

I wasn't aware that was the case, not that I've ever given it any thought. The cost of firing each round was very high when you add in the replacement cost of the barrel, so firing missiles at hundreds of thousands of pounds each must be a good alternative.

The things you learn on OGFB.

[Stanley]

Gun barrel wear was always a serious matter when we progressed to modern guns with high velocity rounds closely fitted to the rifling. The main culprit wasn't the shells but erosion of the bore from the rush of gas from the propellant. The most extreme case of this was the KRUPP'S PARIS GUN. Each successive round was larger and the bore had to be measured each time the gun was reloaded.
When father worked at Vickers Armstrong in Trafford park he was on the huge tanks of whale oil that were used to temper the gun barrels once they had been made.
I found this in the Wiki article on Vanguard. "By early 1939 it was clear that the first two Lion-class battleships could not be delivered before 1943 at the earliest and that further battleship construction would be necessary to match the German and Japanese battleships already under construction. The main constraint on the construction of any new battleships was the limited available capacity and the time required to build large-calibre guns and their gun turrets. Using four existing twin 15-inch (380 mm) mountings offered the possibility of bypassing this bottleneck and allowed the construction of a single fast battleship more quickly than building more Lion-class ships. The turrets were originally built for the battlecruisers Courageous and Glorious during World War I and were removed during the conversions of these ships to aircraft carriers in the 1920s. To save time, the Lion design was modified to accommodate the four turrets and preliminary design work began in July 1939. The square or transom stern was retained as it was estimated to improve speed at full power by .33 knots (0.61 km/h; 0.38 mph). This made Vanguard the only British battleship built with a transom stern as the Lions were never finished."
So I was right about re-use but had got the wrong ships!

[Stanley]

HMS Courageous after conversion to an aircraft carrier. What strikes me is that the conversion would be a massive job!

[Stanley]

HMS Glorious after colliding with the SS Florida in 1938. Looks like another job for the dockyard!

[Stanley]

Liberty Ships built in the US were one of the miracles of WW2. (LINK)



The Carlos Carrillo in 1945. I like this picture because the ship isn't tarted up, this is a hard working tramp steamer looking exactly how it did during the war. I always had the impression that the Liberty ships were thrown together and somehow inferior but a mate of mine bought one which sank off Dunvegan, Skye and salvaged the non-ferrous bits. It was quite amazing how much bronze he brought up. The propellers were bronze but even the ships railings were bronze as well. They didn't have any frills but were strong well built ships. The Americans favoured building oil-fired turbine ships but the British asked for coal firing and reciprocating engines on the grounds that we had plenty of coal but no oil and reciprocating engines were more reliable than turbines and easier to maintain.

[Stanley]

I saw this bulk coal carrier on a TV programme about Australia last night. The 'Panormos' registered in Valetta and carrying coal to China from the East Coast, through the Great Barrier Reef. A big lump!

[Stanley]

The Queen Mary moored at Long Beach California and used as a hotel and convention centre.

[Stanley]

Something that has always interested me is the way a complex structure reacts to stress and the measures needed to guard against this. One small example is the large 9ft boiler at Bancroft which, shortly after start-up developed a serious crack in one of the gusset stays to the front plate. The insurance company decided this was not detrimental to the strength and for the rest of its life the surveyor's report always included the note "crack of long standing in ...... gusset stay". A better example is something I learned about the huge walking drag-line that used to operate in the open cast iron ore mines at Corby. It was built with multiple gussets in the corners of the structure in the knowledge that as the structure settled in, at least one of them would crack to relieve local stress. Think how complicated the structure of a large ship is. Rudyard Kipling wrote a good short story about this, 'The Ship that found Herself' which describes an argument between the various parts of a ship on its maiden voyage, You can find it in 'All In the Day's Work'. Kipling understood his engineering!

[Thomo]

On Naval vessels the boilers were only firmly attached to the ship structure at the firing end, the other end was mounted on "sliding feet" to accommodate the expansion.

[Stanley]

Big stationary engines mounted the same way Peter, only one pair of holding down bolts tight, usually the pair at the front of the cylinder, the others allowed to breathe.

[Stanley]

I caught a glimpse of the interior of a big oil storage tank in the programme on Whaling on BBC4 last night. It reminded me of something that is closely related to my piece about stresses in large structures. I was once helping to take down a very large Whessoe oil storage tank, we were going to re-erect it on another site so it was cut into large sections. I noticed that the lads I was working with, all very experienced men, were being very wary about safety as they worked on cutting the sections, especially the internal cross braces in the upper part of the tank. They told me that we would reach a point where we would make a cut in one section and this would be the final straw relieving the stresses introduced when building the tank as edges were forced to mate with each other by wedging and welding. Sure enough, when Dennis was on the scaffolding cutting a girder it sprang apart violently about 18" and the whole of the tank changed shape! Dennis was ready and had hung on but it was impressive! There were a couple of other incidents like this but that was the most violent. Just goes to show how important experience is when doing jobs like this.

[plaques]

A friend of mine who had spend most of his life in the Royal Navy, (HMS Ark Royal) followed by the fire service, always said that fires in steel constructed buildings were far more dangerous than in wooden constructions. The reason being that you couldn't make an assessment when they were likely to collapse. They would look OK until there was a big 'crack' and the whole lot would come down.

[Stanley]

A fire assessor once told me that in terms of load bearing and resistance to fire in roof structures, steel was the worst, reinforced concrete beams second and wood, particularly oak beams, was the best. He reckoned it was because when oak chars on the outside it makes a fireproof coating. Very noticeable round here in barn fires, the main roof timbers almost always survived and were re-used.

[plaques]

A trip up to Coniston saw us aboard the steam yacht Gondola. Capable of carrying up to 90 passengers. On a beautiful calm day it was a very pleasant way of spending a hour on the lake.

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Originally built in 1898 by Johns and Quiggin of Liverpool it was rebuilt in 1978 by Vickers, Barrow in Furness. The boiler details were by W Bertram & sons Gateshead. Boiler No 173.

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This is a general view of the boiler and engine unit. The pistons are set in a Vee format with one on either side of the boat, The port side piston head can just be seen at the bottom of the red line on the right hand side. The boiler pressure is set at 150 psi and the pistons inlet at arround 40psi.

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A more detailed view shows the cylinder head more clearly and with a bit of imagination you can see the drive crank at the bottom left hand corner.

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Showing the fire box at full steam ahead (7 knots) Incidentally, they burn a wood compound rather than coal. Less calorific value but in the long run cheaper.

[Stanley]

Lovely boat. One of the consequences of good progress with my eye is that Susan and I will get a similar trip on Ullswater on July 9th!

[Stanley]

The hulk of the Concordia is to be floated and towed to Genoa for scrapping in the next ten days. (LINK)

[Tizer]

They knew how to advertise steamship travel in the old days! This is a poster in the museum at the West Somerset Railway, Bishops Lydeard station.