—— =" 
fy iia a a lla 
— o 
INTRODUCTORY PROCEEDINGS. XXXVii 
In your behalf I bid him thrice welcome and tender our best wishes for a long 
continuance of a busy and useful life. 
THE PRESIDENT:—The reading of the papers is now in order. I take great 
pleasure in presenting to you Sir William Henry White, who will read his paper, 
which is first on our program, ‘“‘On The Maximum Dimensions of Ships.”’ 
Srr WituiaAm H. Wuire, Honarary Member:—Mr. President and Gentlemen, 
before I read this paper in abstract, I should like to have: the opportunity of 
thanking the Society for the great honor that was done me many years ago in elect- 
ing me an honorary member. Not long after that action was taken, my health 
broke down under the stress of work, but the kindness which was shown me by 
the President and members of this Society—the President at that time being my 
friend and former pupil, Admiral Bowles—I shall never forget. 
This is the first time that I have been able to attend a meeting of the Society, 
and I wish to take the opportunity, sir, of saying in my own words what I have 
written many years ago, that I am and ever shall remain your grateful debtor. 
It will be for the convenience of the meeting, as this paper has been written 
mainly to provoke discussion, if I indicate its principal points as I go along, in 
order to save time, and do not attempt to read the paper im extenso. I should 
explain that it was written under difficult circumstances, mainly in mid-Atlantic, 
and in weather when the only means I had of writing was to use a pencil, becatse 
the movements of the ship were violent. It was revised in Winnipeg a few days 
ago; if there are any traces of haste in its composition, I hope you will excuse them 
pecause of the circumstances under which the paper was prepared. 
Sir William Henry White then presented the paper in abstract, making the 
following comments, which do not appear in the paper: 
In paragraph I, after ‘‘ Always will be promoted by increased dimensions ’’— 
that is, when the ships are under way and at sea people often forget that a large 
part of the time of service of ships is spent in port, and not under way. That is 
a point to which I draw attention later on. 
Paragraph II, after the words ‘‘and 20 exceeded 15,000 tons” —Facts of that 
nature are not recognized in these discussions as a rule, and they require to be. 
Also in paragraph II, after “Similarly influenced all mercantile marines’’— 
I need not trouble you with the facts, but I have got them here, and they can be 
found in statistical statements of shipping. 
In paragraph III, after ‘‘Were not improved upon’’—I can remember the time 
when we were up against that difficulty of increasing the dimensions of wood- 
hulled ships. As a boy at Devenport I ‘have been on board the Orlando screw- 
frigate, 300 feet long, 5,600 tons displacement and 4,000 horse-power, wood built. 
The attachments of the stern to the rudder post atid stern post were continually 
breaking when full engine power was developed, and the ship herself could not 
‘keep her form. That condition of things no longer affects us as-naval architects. 
