Sir Charles Parsons 175 



a propeller running at fifteen hundred revolutions a 

 minute in hot water the cavities about the blade could be 

 plainly photographed. 



New engines were fitted, and three shafts were used with 

 three small propellers on each. At last the little boat 

 began to move. She did more than thirty-two knots, and 

 the experts became greatly interested. 



1897 was the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, 

 and the greatest Naval Review in history was held at 

 Spithead. Into the array of vast steel-clad giants slipped 

 the tiny Turbinia, travelling at a speed of thirty-five 

 knots, or forty miles an hour. The newspapers were full 

 of accounts of " The Fastest Vessel Afloat." One corre- 

 spondent wrote : 



Turbinia is propelled by an engine different from any that 

 was put before into a boat. It has no fly wheel, no backwards 

 and forwards movement of rods and pistons, no intricate 

 valves ; it is a hundred times simpler than the ordinary steam 

 engine and as easy to understand as a windmill. Indeed it is 

 quite like a windmill in this, that the steam, being driven 

 against the fans of specially made wheels on the three propeller 

 shafts, makes these turn very rapidly, and of course the screws 

 turn with the shafts. . . . The screws of Turbinia make about 

 two thousand five hundred revolutions a minute without any 

 vibration, whereas the best marine engine in the world, with 

 reciprocating motion, would tear itself to pieces doing one- 

 fourth as many. 



The Admiralty had followed all the trials of Turbinia 

 and witnessed her success, and now gave an order for a 

 destroyer to the firm of which Parsons was a member. 

 Thus in 1898 work began upon the Viper. She was a 

 small ship, two hundred and ten feet long, twenty-one 

 feet beam, and of three hundred and seventy tons burden. 

 She had two sets of turbines, each with a high- and low- 

 pressure machine working in series, and there were four 

 shafts instead of three. 



