ELECTRIC PROPULSION OF MERCHANT SHIPS. 291 



is amidships you cannot cut out the tunnel and not put in a passageway. That removes the 

 necessity of the two engine-rooms being connected up, but, incidentally, a horseshoe or 

 other form of thrust block might be put in, but that is a small matter. 



With regard to the engine-room, Mr. Emmet has shown an arrangement which one 

 of our members has criticised, but there is no object in criticising an arrangement of that 

 kind — ^what 1 mean is, there is nothing against that arrangement, providing you put in the 

 proper supports for the machinery. This is being done in the case of a number of ships be- 

 ing built on the Continent today which are to be constructed with a particular form of 

 electric propulsion. That is not new. It is new from Mr. Emmet's view, and the extent 

 to which he has used it, in his layout. 



The generating motors are put in the wings of the ship, and everything in the engine- 

 room is above the boilers, and it is only minor details which prevent this arrangement from 

 being quite correct and suitable. There is no question but that the use of electric propulsion 

 does cut down the space occupied by the machinery — there is no question about it — and 

 you can divide the electric generating equipment into small units, if you like, and I have no 

 doubt the electricians are competent to get up two or three units, to be applied to one pro- 

 peller, and with a slight increase of expense involved in the separation, but of course that 

 has not the economy of a single turbine arrangement. 



In various ways, Mr. Emmet's comparison, while not absolutely correct, is in its scale 

 fairly satisfactory, and my conclusion, based on my own investigations at one time on a 

 large ship, was that, both with regard to space and weight, the electrical equipment had the 

 advantage. But in regard tO' expense — and, of course, the question of expense is simply a 

 matter for discussion from time to time, because it varies so enormously — but as a matter 

 of expense there was not much to choose between electric propulsion and geared turbines. 

 It was higher, of course, than for triple expansion engines. The best proof of the prac- 

 tical nature of these electric proposals is that a firm like the Cunard Company went seri- 

 ously into the question and before the war decided to have the Caronia equipped with elec- 

 tric propulsion and take out the triple expansion engines. Then the war came along and 

 stopped it. 



You know how cautious the Cunard people are, and there was no reason for their 

 coming to that conclusion if they had not been quite sure that the thing was right. As to 

 the question of water getting down into the engine-room, of course it gets into the engine- 

 room, but you can close in the electric motors with very light equipment. We had our moo- 

 ter in the stem of a small, ship, and completely covered, and there was not the slightest 

 prospect that water getting down in the engine-room would cause any trouble at all. These 

 are practical details which can be worked out if you get busy and put electric marine pro- 

 pulsion into service. 



Mr. B. G. Fe;rnald, Member: — Mr. Emmet's paper is entitled "The Electric Drive," 

 but it is largely given over to a discussion of the failure O'f the geared turbines. A good 

 many of his statements about the geared turbine have already been refuted, but I think it is 

 fitting to state that the failure of geared turbines, which is in everybody's mind now, con- 

 sists of the failure of geared turbines on ships either requisitioned or contracted for by the 

 Emergency Fleet Corporation. In the case of geared turbines contracted for by private 

 owners, before the war, there was some trouble, but relatively little compared with the 

 trouble experienced later on the Emergency Fleet vessels. 



All this trouble was experienced with a few designs (approximately six). Sufficient 



