The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1890-05-18
A NEW ATLANTIC sCREAMER.
The Ship That May Provide the Next
Sensation for record Beating.
From the London Times.

From the London Times
A new competitor in the Atlantic service,
the Normannia (Hamburg American Line),
was tried on the Clyde last week with re-
markable results. 1t is only twelve months
since the first proposals to build the vessel
were made, and it is difficult TO imagine
how so enormous structure, 500 feet in
length, 81 feet inch beam, and meas
uring $500 tons, could be put together, with
two sets of engines, and furnished with all
the innumerable fittings necessary for an
ocean-going snip. in SO short space of time.
No steamer of the same size has ever been
produced with such expedition, and few
have been delivered, as the Normannia was,
the very day she was due.
Another feature of this vessel, as regards
Workmanship. consists in the fact that
within three days of her leaving the dock
she achieved speed of over n knots on the
measured mile and of 2015 in the run on
Saturday from the Cloch light to the Cum
brae The Normannia has realized greater
speed on the measured mile than any other
Atlantic liner on her trials, and with dis
tinctly less effort
She has nine double-ended boilers, with
eight furnaces in each, and three tunnels,
but has no forced draught. She is, how
ever, provided with open fans to ventilate
Iu0 SJOh6UOi6Ss LIS 61lu6lLlN
tory, and may lead to engineers abandoning
the policy of forcing air through the fur
naces to the destruction of the boiler plates
and furnace bars, straining the boilers by
excessive contraction on cooling.
The engines are two sets of triple-expan-
sion cylinders, with a downward stroke OF
81 feet. The diameters eff the cylinders
are 40 inches in the high pressure, 81 inches
10 the intermediate, and LOG inches in the
low pressure. The steam is worked at 16C
pounds, and the revolutions at sea will
probably be about SIS. On some occasions
on the trial they made 93.
The screws are only Is feet in diameter,
the smallest of any blades yet put upon q
twin-screw Atlantic steamer. The horse
power contracted for was $4,000, with q
speed of 10 knots, but over 5000 horse
power has been indicated, and the coal
consumption is not much over ~ pounds
per horse power per hour.
The form of the hull and the number and
character of the compartments into which
it is sub-divided are matters of special in.
terest t. the public. There are l6 bulkheads
making II water-tight compartments, and
there are doorways through only five of the
transverse bulkheads. The subdivision oi
the hull however, does not stop here
| Throughout tho whole length of the ship
the floor Of the vessel has double skin, anG
Cn6 inner 0OOr is throughout 4 inches ABOVE
| the lower or outer bottom except in the
| part under the engines, where the inter.
vening space is Z feet deep. There are nc
| fewer than nineteen of these spaces, so thai
| the hull is subdivided into as many as
thirty-six water tight compartments. These
spaces are largely utilized for water ballast
and their contents are controlled by pump:
which are in all cases worked from the main
deck, where the donkey engine and donkey
boiler for pumping are also placed. This
| arrangement of the pumps permits of con-
tinuous steam pumping in the event of ar
| accident, such as that which befel the City
of Paris, whose pumps were below the
water line, and therefore useless as soon as
they were swamped.
To put out the fires and stop the engines
of the Normannia it would be necessary to
make havoc of five compartments. The
! nine boilers are placed three abreast, and
| each triplet is contained in the center oil
three water-tight compartments. Two Of
these compar tments in each set are coal
bunkers, stretching right across the ship
and each set of three boilers communicates
by separate steam-pipes with both sets OF
| engines. The boilers are, as before stated
further protected by the double floor anc
| its subdivisions, and thus it will be seer
the engineer has three sources from which
to draw his steam, besides having the two
sets of engines for locomotion.