Evening star., 1936-04-19

her lines were beautiful Size is but
size; but nobility of form is in another
dimension.
To come upon the great ship thus
was to see her in a new and surprising
light. 1t was like turning an un-
promising alley in Amiens or Seville,
and seeing at a glance, when not
expecting it, the immense ascent of
the masonry of the medieval cathedral
builders. 1t is triumphant. We cannot
build cathedralS today. though we try
to. If the joy and faith of those old
craftsmen when lifting their pinnacles
can be matched by anything built in
our age of machines, then it is in the
sheer and molding and the audacious
lift of the tiers of great liner. Her
weight and mass are forgotten in the
haughtiness of her PROV - her hawse
openings resemble Sphinx-like eyes -
and the life and repose of her run.
When steamships began a regular
Atlantic service. shipping company
maintained its New York and Euro
pean service with four principal ships.
OF late years. with speed well over
twenty knots, a company kept its
regular weekly schedule with three
liners. At one time, steamer had to
fill every hole and corner with coal for
the voyage. She burned mine of it to
get enough power. She had little room
for passengers or cargo.
The progression has been of ever
greater power from lighter engines
with less fuel. 1t is possible today to
get the speed of the Mauretania. and
trif1e more. by using the same
amount of fuel for the engines of
vessel of double her tonnage. A COM
pany's weekly service across the
Atlantic may be now maintained by
two great ships
Yet for how long could a vast ship
maintain such a drive? Dependability
is more important than speed; speed
is useless without it. A weekly sailing
schedule loses its meaning if a ship
cannot keep up with the clock for
round year.
The trouble with high power, which
is to save time. is that it makes its
presence felt. Passengers feel it be-
cause the ship feels it. "A ship. too.
becomes tired If over-engined for the
strength of her bones. The anatomy,
substance and balance OF great liner
must be very artfully planned to
allow passengers to forget the terrific
energy carrying them along seven
hundred miles each day, and to allow
a ship to main tain that without dis
tress.
SeaworthineSs is the first virtue of
ship. The body of a long ship, when
crossing ocean ranges towering before
a gale, has to suffer intense stresses.
There are times when both bow and
stern are on crests of the sea and her
length bridges valley; amidships,
then, in such a moment, she tends to
drop. or sag. Or she lifts amidships on
the summit of a huge wave, and then
the downward pulls of the weights of
the unequally supported bows and
stern would give her the back of a hog.
The Atlantic will do its worst to rend
her decks and burst her keel plates; to
break her. This will happen not only
once or twice, but for days together,
or perhaps for most of the winter.
So we see what naval architects
and engineers have to do, before they
dare say they have the idea right
and may hand it over to the steel
workers, riveters and the other crafts
men to give it materiality. With the
general dimensions they are given, her
designers have to know, while she is
no more than a body of mathematical
calculations, what her weight will be
Il hull. machinery and load. They
must know also her trim, or the man.
ner in which those weights will be
CI1