Sir Charles Parsons 177 



the Queen, three hundred and ten feet long and forty feet 

 beam. She steamed nearly twenty-two knots. It was 

 found possible to bring her to a dead stop, when travelling 

 at nineteen knots, in one minute seven seconds, a feat 

 impossible with the old-fashioned engines, and she was 

 seen to gather way much more quickly than other vessels. 

 She also burned twenty-five per cent, less coal than her 

 older sisters and required a smaller engine-room staff. 

 The oil consumption was very much less. 



The first turbine-engined yacht was the Emerald, built 

 in 1903, a vessel of nine hundred tons. She was also the 

 first turbine-engined ship to cross the Atlantic, but the 

 time had now come for the great trans-Atlantic lines to 

 order turbines for their new ships. The honour of being 

 the first to do so belongs to the Allan Line, who built the 

 Victorian and Virginian, each a big liner of thirteen 

 thousand tons. These carried what were by far the 

 largest turbine engines yet built. The high-pressure tur- 

 bine for the Victorian had a diameter of sixty-eight and 

 three-quarter inches at the high-pressure end, and at the 

 low-pressure end a diameter of seventy-four inches ; the 

 low-pressure turbine ran from seventy-four to ninety-five 

 and three-quarter inches. The revolutions to give a speed 

 of nineteen knots were only two hundred and ninety a 

 minute, and the weight of the machinery in each ship was 

 four hundred tons less than for triple-expansion engines. 



The Cunard Company were the next to act. In 1904 

 they decided to build two new vessels, each of thirty 

 thousand tons. These were the Carmania and Caronia. 

 The Carmania was to have turbines, and the Caronia to 

 have the very last thing in reciprocating engines. Other- 

 wise the two vessels were twins, each being six hundred 

 and seventy-eight feet long and seventy-two beam. Once 

 more the verdict was in favour of the turbines, for Car- 

 mania proved herself capable of twenty knots as against 

 Caronia s nineteen and a half on similar coal consumption, 



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