OCEAN TRAVEL.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2506, 20 May 1909, Page 2

OCEAN TRAVEL.

MINIMISING THE DANGERS.

THE TREMENDOUS IMPROVEMENTS IN MARINE CONSTRUC-

TION

(By Thaddeus S. Dayton, in “Munsey’s Magazine.”) TravePby sea is now safer than travel on land. The passenger on ail ocean liner is in less danger than he won Id be at home—far less than in going about city streets or journeying by rail. This condition has been brought about largely within the past 25 years by the tremendous l , improvements in marine construction, and by wonderful devices that give vessels timely warning of approaching dangers. More has been done in this brief space to make sea travel safe than during all the centuries that have passed since the discovery of the mariner’s compass. Me may almost say. to-day, that the sea is conquered. A great ship no longer fears even the titanic force of the hurricane. That only makes her decrease her speed a little. Practically the sole dangers that remain are caused by fog; b\it even these are far less fearsome than of old. The crackling air-borne whisper of the wireless and the faint ethereal chime of the submarine bells, sounding through miles of grey ocean, have gone far in routing these. * LAST REMAINING PERILS OF THE DEEP. The average passenger on an ocean liner little realises what is being dono to guard him on the voyage from shore to shore. Thousands of people are watching over his safety, some of them from the land and others upon the ea. Three great factors in making ocean travel safe on the voyage are watertight compartments on vessels, the wireless telegraph, and the submarine bell. r f it had not been for the staunch bulkheads of the Republic and Florida, tlio recent collision of those two vessels would have bad a far sadder ending. That the former stayed afloat as long as she did after having been stabbed in a vital spot was due to the steel partitionsthat kept the inrushing water from flooding her whole structure. "When the sea enters any part of a ship’s hull its pressure ■on these steel walls is tremendous—perhaps a ton to every square foot, or still more as the water rises higher. If the rivets start the fraction of an inch under this terrific strain, the flood will seep through, and the bulkheads will finally collapse. Marine constructors are already seeking to build vessels with stronger and more, numerous bulkheads, , especially round the engine-room , so as to safeguard the fiery heart of the ship from being pierced by any ; blow . i No matter how strong these steel- j clad inner walls may. he, they are as nothing if their doors cannot be closed ] in an intant. This can be done on most , of the great liners. Years ago < the shutting of the doors between the ' watertight compartments was left to s the crew. When imminent danger men- ] acod, gongs and whistles sounded, order- . ing the men to spring to their stations j and slam the heavy doors. Ten years i ago. when the Cromartyshire rammed the Burgogne in the fog over the { Grand Banks, and the latter went down , with almost all on board, it was be- >, cause the crew lost their heads at the , supreme moment, and 5 FAILED TO CLOSE THE BULK- c HEAD DOORS. < The elimination of the human ele- ‘ ment in guarding the ship or a railway ‘ train spells safety. To-day, should one f vessel be approaching through the fog, t the .telephone would instantly carry the 'j lookout’s warning to the captain on the j bridge. He would seize a long brass lever and throw it up as for as it 1 would go. W'hilq. it descended greatgongs would sound all through the ship. ] In seven seconds they would cease, and < the doors of every compartment would ] fly shut; the purpose of the gongs being ,1 to warn everyone to get out of the way. ; As each door closes, a lamp beside the 1 lever glows. If one fails to work the 1 signal gives notice; bnt the doors do ] not fail. The mechanical device is more 1 trustworthy than human hands. < s Much has been said about wireless 1 telegraphy having saved the day in the s Florida-Republic disaster. As a matter of fact, the wireless, good work as it s did, did not save a life on either vessel, i The Republic’s bulkheads 'kept her i afloat long enough for her passengers i to be taken off in boats; the Florida’s i bulkheads enabled her to reach New \ York. The people on board both i liners —except four or five- crushed in i the collision —would have got safely ( ashore had no other vessel been sum- j moned to their -aid. THE WONDERS OF THE WIRE- < LESS. 1

That wireless telegraphy is already a tremendous factor in the saving and safeguarding life at sea there is no doubt. At present its working is far from perfect, and there is much that is mysterious and uncertain in the way it operates. • At Cape Sable, the other day, the wireless station talked with a vessel six hundred miles distant. Not long ago one of the Bermuda liners, far out at sea. sent a wireless to New York. It was first caught at Cleveland, Ohio, and sent by land wires to its destination. ( Yet already, as I have said, the wonderful invention of Marconi is of great service at sea. By relaying messages from ship to ship and then to shore, a vessel is never out of touch with land all the? way across the Atlantic. At present, outside the navies of the leading maritime Powers, less than four hundred steamers are equipped with the necessary mechanism; but it is likelv that within a few years a seagoing craft will not be allowed to leave port unless it has a wireless o lit fit. Even now, many of the leading fishing boats that sail from Massacliussotts ports for the Banks of Newfoundland, and those from England and Europe that harvest in the North Sea, arc thus equipned. This is partly as a saleguard against being run clown in the dense fogs, and partly as a means or reporting their catches to their owners or agents ashore, in order to secure the best markets. THE SUBMARINE BELL. Jt is hard to tell from what direction a wireless message comes when it flics frbm ship to ship in a fog. The electrical waves have been likened to those of water when a stone is dropped into a still pool and sends ripples out in every direction. The submarine fog bell—within a more limited radius, of course —is surer. These* bells are hung under the keels of vessels, and Tne telephone apparatus is attached to the hull under water. The wires .run (from the port and starboard sides of the ship to the bridge, where there is a metal box, from which hang two ordinary receivers. If the captain does not hear the hell through the receiver on one side he tries the other, and that gives . .

him the direction from which the sound comes. Water is a truer carrier than air. The mellow strokes of these submarine bells have been heard through fifteen miles of sea. They are now attached to most lightships on the coast, and obviate the old and dangerous way of being guided by the leadman’s soundings when approaching the shore in a fog. The captain of tlio Baltic said, the other day, that he was aided more by the submarine bell than by the wireless in locating the wrecked Republic, when once he reached her neighbourhood. Clothed in steel, and with the interior divided into so many air-tight compartments with steel walls, the vessels of to-day are far loss in danger of fire than they wore, Small fires may occur, but they can generally be confined within a narrow space until they are extinguished by water or by live steam. GREAT SHIPS IWAT DEFY STORMS.

Not only do the big boats no longer fear the most severe gale, but they scarcely notice it. On a recent voyage the captain of one of the crack liners was approached by a passenger after a violent storm had begun to subside. The captain showed the landsman his logbook, in which he had described the waves and wind as “tremendous.” He said that in all his many years of seafaring he had never encountered a more furious tempest of more mountainous seas, nor had he ever before used that particular adjective iu his logbook. Yet the great ship’s speed did not fall below twenty knots an hour, and even the passengers wore not alarmed. England and Germany are now fighting for the supremacy of the sea in the swift and safe carrying of passengers across the Atlantic. To-day Britain is in the lead with the two giant Cunarders, the Lusitania and the Maure’tania, each seven hundred and ninety foot long, with an average speed which may fairly be set at twenty-five knots an hour. Orders are in for a HamburgAmorican liner that shall be ten feet longer, and other German boats ninehundred feet in length, it is said, are being planned.. . It is significant that the new Hoboken piers of the German lines stretch out nine hundred feet into the North River. The International Mercantile Marine Company has been considering for some time the building of a boat a thousand feet in length along tlio water-line. Such a lingo ship would cost more than eight million dollars and require a crew of nearly a thousand men. A thousand feet is regarded as the limit of length of a steamship by the marine experts of to-day. Perhaps those of to-morrow will have other views.

Tlio faster a boat or a railway train, the safer it is. say the experts. They explain that it is because the zone of danger is traversed in less time, for one thing. A slow boat —theoretically— is in danger for six, seven, or eight days from the perils of the sea ; a fast one, for four, and a half days. Tlie limit of speed has been increased by the turbine propulsion engines; the next word in motive-power, Lewis Nixon says, will be the suction gas engine. The advantages of this is that no stokers will bo needed, and the fuel bill will be cut- in half. If this comes about—and it is more than likely—it will cause an entire readjustment of the interiors of the great steamships, and give them far greater carrying capacity than they have to-day. It will also prevent the destruction of the Inotive-power by the smashing in of a vessel’s central compartment, for' reserve engines may be located 'in different parts of the hull, and will take up comparatively little space. Even now. the placing of reserve light-gener-ating apparatus, operated bv gasoline or by gas, on one side of the upper decks, is being planned; so that, if a ship’s engineroom is flooded, the lights may still shine, and darkness may not be added to the other terrors of wreck. HOW OUR COASTS ARE GUARDED. Something like two million people pass back and forth between this country and foreign shores every year. It is for them that hundreds of lighthouses flare along every reef and dangerous bit of gale-beaten coast. The United States spends nearly seven millions dollars annually in lighting tlio pathways of passing ships. Besides this there arc innumerable bells, buoys, and smaller beacons to guide the inwardbound or outward-bound vcsspl to the safety of the harbors or the open sea. Lately, too, the Government has been sending out storm-warnings and weather predictions to .ships at sea by wireless. A six hundred-foot tower will soon be built in "Washington. with wireless apparatus that will have the tremendous range of three thousand miles, so that messages may be flung through the ether to the farther shores of the Atlantic.

Along the ten thousand miles of this country’s scacoast there are more than two thousand men employed at the lifesaving stations. Of all the thousands of vessels that entered our ports or passed our shores, only, fifty-two were wrecked. These fifty-two ships carried more than thirty-seven hundred people, all of whom were rescued except fifteen, ■while incidentally the lifesavers preserved property worth eleven million dollars. So far no light has been devised that will penetrate/ the thickest fog more than”ii ship’s length. That such a, light will ever be invented is doubted by the best authorities. A year or so ago there were rumors that an English scientist had succeeded in perfecting a process for dispelling fog, but nothing has been heard of it since. "When the last great peril of the sea is conquered it will probibly be done by means of audible signals.