DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF PASSENGER STEAMERS. 291 



and "construction," represent the very heart of our activities, and I am sure that you have 

 all been very much interested in this brief abstract which Mr. Rigg has given of his paper. 

 It is a subject which lies the very closest, possibly, to our very life and continuance as a 

 society, and I hope it will be freely discussed. It is now before you. 



Professor Herbert C. Sadler, Member of Council: — Mr. Rigg has, I think, pre- 

 sented us with a very interesting summary on the whole question of the design and con- 

 struction of passenger steamers. 



It is always interesting to look ahead, and perhaps a little more interesting to prophesy 

 what is going to happen in the future. I remember some years ago — I think it was in 

 1902 — I presented a paper before this Society on the subject of the strength of the ships, 

 and I projected the results on to a 1,000-foot ship. At that time I was criticised in a good- 

 natured way by my friends, who wondered what had happened to me when I was talking 

 about 1,000-foot ships, and now, of course, the 1,000-foot ship is an actual fact, or practi- 

 cally so. I mention that to show that I think, as naval architects and marine engineers, the 

 mere question of size is one that would not bother any of us, even if we have to increase 

 the size of our shipyards. The problem from the engineering standpoint is not insuperable. 



There are a few factors which will tend to limit the size of ships. The problem of 

 speed, and the capacity of the ship, both from a passenger and a cargo standpoint, are 

 the things that will finally determine the best size. I do not think we need to bother our- 

 selves with projecting into the future any limitations as far as size goes. I think they will 

 fix themselves entirely on the factors of the problem, and this is true, equally, for warships 

 as for merchant ships. We know sufficient, or we can get the information easily, about 

 speeds and powers, to be able to predict exactly what is going to happen before we build 

 a ship. We know enough about construction and weight, etc., to know exactly where we 

 are coming out in any proposed design. The thing which will finally determine the best 

 size will be the economics of the whole thing for the particular service for which any 

 vessel is to be designed, etc. 



I think from now on the tendency will be to study the whole problem of passenger 

 ship construction, perhaps a good deal more minutely than it has been done in the past, 

 and it will not, perhaps, be so very necessary to go to the very large ship in order to 

 achieve the objects we want to accomplish. 



A paper like this, therefore, I think, throws out some very valuable suggestions, and 

 it is interesting to note, as is known to all of us, of course, the enormous expense en- 

 tailed in order to get a reduction of one day even in the passage across the Atlantic. 

 I venture to throw out this suggestion : Is it worth while to save one day in five, or one 

 day in four; that is, looking to the future? We have a competitor for high speed — the 

 airship ; and I think that the people who are going to be in a hurry in the future will prob- 

 ably go by air rather than by water. Those who want comfort will go, perhaps, by water, 

 and they probably will have a little more room. But I think we should bear in mind that 

 we have, more or less, reached our economical limits of speed on the water, and we can 

 never hope to approach the speeds that are easily obtained in the air. In other words, 

 I do not think we can ever hope, as naval architects, to design a ship that would go across 

 the Atlantic in thirty-six hours. 



Mr. Hugo P. Frear, Member of Council: — Mr. Rigg has put a lot of thought and hard 

 work into his paper, and the Society is to be congratulated in having presented to it one so 



