projected vessel; sometimes they take as part payment for the work some
older vessels of the line, which they refit, re-engine, modernize,
and sell again. The ability of the builders to make an arrangement of
this kind, of course, influences the placing of the contract, in a
measure, but they must also be able to give certain guarantees. They
must enter into an engagement that the projected ship shall be able
to carry so many passengers and so many tons of cargo, and to attain
a specified speed on a given consumption of coal per day. Let us say,
for instance, that the stipulations are these: Accommodations for 600
saloon passengers, 150 intermediate passengers, and 1,500 steerage
passengers; registered tonnage, 6,000, speed, 19 knots on a consumption
of 300 tons per day. If the ship fails to fulfil these conditions the
builders agree to forfeit a part of the amount they would otherwise
receive for her, or they may be compelled to take her back altogether.
This was the case with the City of Rome, which was built for the Inman
line by the Barrow Ship-building Company. A beautiful ship in every
way; of exquisite model; fitted with a degree of luxury unsurpassed at
the time she was launched, she proved to have neither the speed nor the
carrying capacity which had been guaranteed, and the Inman line refused
to accept her. In a very few instances only are such guarantees omitted
from the contract.
Now, ship-building is not an exact science, and the closest
calculations are often upset in the result by unforeseen and
inexplicable causes. It can never be said with absolute certainty just
what speed a ship will attain, or exactly what quantity of cargo she
will carry. The most ingenious and patient of experiments have not yet
succeeded in eliminating the mysterious variability of result which
the ship-builder finds, however closely he repeats his well-defined
formulas. Two ships, like the Umbria and the Etruria, may be built
side by side, of identical materials, lines, and dimensions; engines,
boilers, and propellers may be the same, yet one will turn out to be
a knot or two faster than the other, and neither the designer nor the
builder is able to say why.
It is apparent, then, that in guaranteeing an exceptionally high
rate of speed the builder assumes no little risk. The designing of a
fast ship is indeed more of an art than a science, and each designer
proceeds on a theory more or less his own. If the reader has an
opportunity to compare models of the Servia, the Alaska, and the
City of Rome, three ships built at the same time, each intended to
rival the others, he will see by the varying proportions of length or
breadth, and by other contrasts, how the opinions of the architects
have differed as to the best lines for obtaining speed. True, it is not
possible to ignore formulas altogether, but the designer’s intuitions
or inspirations are not less serviceable to him than his technical
knowledge.
[Illustration: The Umbria just before Launching.]
We will suppose, however, that the designer sees his way to build such
a ship as the specifications submitted to him call for, and that the
contract is awarded to him, or to the firm he represents. The ship
is now tentatively on paper, though her essential features are well
defined, and the next step takes us to Glasgow and the Clyde.
II.
If in crossing the Atlantic for the first time you choose Glasgow for
your port of disembarkation, the sail up the Firth of the Clyde and
the river is likely to be full of agreeable and memorable surprises.
The beauties of that route are not advertised, and one hears so little
of them in advance that they gain impressiveness from the absence of
expectation. The Firth itself is like a great Fjord, a land-locked
bay hollowed between hills and crags, among which vapory clouds are
always shifting, and its deep salt waters are ploughed by fleets of
vessels of every class, and especially by yachts, sea-going steamers,
and the most rakish-looking excursion boats in the world; it is not
unlike the Hudson above Peekskill, though much wider; the rounded hills
have the same soft and civilized outlines, and the same appearance of
reclamation for man’s use and delectation; modern villas crown their
heights and watering-places cluster at their feet.
Just below Greenock the passage narrows, and above that we enter the
river, which, though not beautiful, is more of a surprise than even
the Firth. It meanders through fields, and from the towering deck upon
which we stand we look down upon ploughmen at work, cattle grazing, and
snug farm-houses. So narrow is the stream, and so low are the banks,
that the big steamer seems curiously out of place. How, one asks, has
Glasgow ever prospered with so small a river as its only outlet to
the sea? We have thought of the Clyde as a wide and capacious stream
like the Mersey opposite Birkenhead, or the Hudson opposite New York;
but, instead, it is scarcely as wide as the East River at Brooklyn,
and there are reaches where two large vessels have no room to spare in
passing each other.
Such as it is, all sorts of dredging operations are necessary to keep
it open, and it has been said to be as much an artificial channel as
the Suez Canal.
The first steamboat to navigate it was the Comet, in 1812, and though
she drew but four feet of water she could leave Glasgow only on the
flood tide. Even then she sometimes ran aground, and her passengers had
to wade or swim ashore, or wait twelve hours for the next tide. Its
depth is ample now, however, and it is the breadth that astonishes us:
it seems as though a venturesome jumper might easily spring from the
deck to either bank. The farms are alternated by shipyards in which the
hulls of ships in various stages of construction loom up, with ant-like
specks of humanity swarming upon them. Some of them are nearly twice
as long as the river is wide, and it puzzles the stranger to say how
they can be launched, until someone, wiser than he is, tells him that
they slide into the stream obliquely and thus overcome the difficulty.
Nearly all the steamers that have earned fame in the Atlantic trade
have been built and engined at one or the other of these ship-yards,
from the first Cunarder to the City of Paris; the Cunard, Inman,
Guion, and North German Lloyd lines have come to this little river for
their ships. And as we approach Glasgow, burrowing into the dark that
envelops the town, it becomes narrower still, and within the limits of
the port is nothing more than a long canal with ships huddled together
along the banks.
The Clyde is, in fact, like one of those heroic personages who triumph
over natural disadvantages which to the common mind are insuperable,
and its inferiority in depth and breadth has been counterbalanced by
excellences in other directions. In the first place Glasgow is the
natural outlet of a great mineral field, so that after iron and steel
became the principal materials of the ship-builder, he could find them
on the banks of the little river unburdened by the increased price
asked for them when it has been necessary to carry them long distances.
In the second place the Clyde was the scene of the earliest attempts at
steam navigation in Great Britain, by Miller, Symington, and Bell, and
descending from them the genius of ship-building has become hereditary
with the inhabitants of the town. “Practice makes perfect,” and the
ship-builders of Glasgow have more practice than any people of their
craft in the kingdom. In 1886 forty-five vessels were built at London,
measuring 3,696 tons; sixteen vessels at Liverpool, measuring 18,268
tons, and on the Tyne, fifty vessels, measuring 49,641 tons. On the
Clyde, during the same period, one hundred and fifty-one vessels were
built, measuring 135,659 tons—nearly double the work done by all the
other ship-yards combined. Thus, when after various conclaves and the
discussion of ways and means, the directors decide to put a new vessel
on their line, the order is pretty sure to go to Glasgow.
III.
We have assumed the work of the naval architect to be complete;
all the specifications have been made out, and every part of the
prospective ship has been drawn on paper. There are three plans: a
“sheer plan,” showing all lines of length and height from stem to
stern; a “half-breadth plan,” showing the lines of length and breadth,
or, in other words, those lines which would be visible in looking down
upon her decks from an elevation; and a “body plan,” which shows all
lines of breadth and height, and represents the ship looked at “end
on.” These are called the “construction drawings,” and with them in
his hand the ship-builder can see in his mind’s eyes the vessel as
she will appear when built. He does not work directly from these,
however. They are carried up into the “mould loft,” the floor of which
represents an enormous blackboard, and upon this they are reproduced to
correspond with the exact dimensions of the ship. A foot is scaled down
on the paper to a quarter of an inch, but in the mould loft a foot is
a foot, and plate, girder, and rib are drawn to their full size. This
enlargement leads to the detection of errors which are not apparent in
the reduced drawings, and which must be eliminated. Straight lines are
made with chalk by cords and rules, and curves by bending laths into
the desired position and then tracing the sweep upon the floor. Every
measurement has to be verified and checked, and “fairing the ship,”
as this work is called, may take six or seven weeks. All errors having
been corrected, still another drawing is made on a “scrive board,”
and in this the lines, full-sized, are sunk in the wood so that they
cannot be rubbed out. The “scrive board” is the plan from which the
ship-builder works, and when it is complete the actual construction of
the ship is begun.
[Illustration: General View of the Frames of the City of New York—June
25, 1887.]
The keel is laid down on blocks, four or five feet apart, which form
a slope toward the water, so that the hull may glide down easily when
the time for launching comes. It is not a keel at all, in the sense in
which the word was formerly used: a modern ship has a smooth bottom,
without any projecting ridge or break to the curve of her sides; it
is simply the central series of plates, from which an inner keel is
built up like an enormous backbone, and to this the ribs are attached.
The metal is delivered at the yard in the shape of angle iron or angle
steel, the latter being the material which would be used in a ship
of the class we have in mind. Heated to a white heat, the angle-bars
are drawn out of the furnace into a perfectly level iron floor, upon
which they are bent to the needed curve, and that which has been a
line of ink in the original drawing, a chalk mark on the floor of the
mould loft, and a groove in the surface of the “scrive board,” is now
embodied in the heavy rib of the ship. The bending is done thus: the
metal floor is perforated with thousands of holes, into which iron pegs
are inserted until they form the curvature required, and the long,
pliable bar of steel is pressed against them until it corresponds
exactly with the line exhibited in the “scrive board,” which is always
in sight of the workmen for guidance and comparison. In handling the
metal the men use pitchforks, and with the prongs inserted in the holes
they get purchase enough to make the bar yield; if it bends upward
a hammer is used upon it. Each rib has, of course, to be duplicated
with the utmost precision, in order that it shall be the same on both
sides of the ship, and each, after it has cooled, is laid upon the
“scrive board” and compared with the lines thereon, every variation
being corrected before it is passed. Having already been punched
for rivets, it is then marked with a chisel to show where rib-bands,
stringers, and deck-beams are to fit into it.
Two or three months or less after the completion of the “fairing,”
the ship is probably “in frame,” and looks like the skeleton of some
Brobdignagian monster that has stranded on the bank of the river. The
ribs have been hoisted into position at right angles with the keel,
and strung together by “rib-bands,” and already there are signs of the
coming subdivision by decks and bulkheads of the hollow space within.
You can still see through her, however; she is like, to make yet
another comparison, a great oblong wicker-basket, the supple willows
being represented by the net-work of steel.
The next step is the clothing of the ribs with plates. As they
reach the yard the plates are square and flat, but they are passed
through rollers of various kinds, from which they issue in any shape
desired—hollowed like a spoon, curved lengthwise or breadthwise or
diagonally, as the contour of the ship may call for. A steam or
hydraulic plane smooths them down as though they were the softest of
whitewood; another machine trims the edges as easily as a woman cuts
silk with a pair of scissors. Then, suspended by iron chains, they are
thrust between the jaws of a punching machine, which has a resemblance
to a sinister human face with a flat nose, a long upper lip, and a
small chin. The jaws close upon them and bite out, ten at a time, the
holes for the rivets by which they are to be fastened to the frame.
As they are hoisted up to the workmen, each fits the exact place
designed for it and takes its part in the softly swelling lines of
the ship. They are put on in rows, or, as rows are technically called
in this connection, “strakes,” which are lettered alphabetically, A
being the row riveted to the keel. The upper edge of A overlaps the
lower edge of B, and the lower edge of C overlaps the upper edge of
B, and thus while one row of plates like B has both edges hidden, the
row above it has both edges exposed, which minimizes resistance to the
progress of the ship. We all know what caulking a wooden vessel is—the
wedging of all seams between the planks with oakum and tar. An iron or
steel ship is also caulked, but in her case the word has a different
meaning. The sharp edges of the plates are merely turned in with a
chisel, and they meet so closely that no insertion is necessary to
exclude the water.
[Illustration: Frames of the City of New York, looking aft—July 19,
1887.]
First held in place by bolts and nuts, the plates are finally secured
by the rivets, the holes for which have previously been countersunk
by machinery, so that there are no protuberances. The rivets go right
through, and have double heads: millions of them are used, and every
one of them is examined and checked before the work is passed as
satisfactory.
[Illustration: Frames of the City of New York, looking forward—July 19,
1887.]
At last the hull is closed in, and hundreds of artisans toil upon it,
inside and out. At the end of a year, perhaps, the ship is ready for
launching, by which time, if she is of the same dimensions as the City
of New York or the City of Paris, seven thousand tons of material have
been placed in position, one casting alone—the sternpost—weighing
twenty-six tons. She is a steel ship, but in addition to the metal,
one hundred and twenty thousand cubic feet of timber, brought from all
parts of the world, have been used in her. From the cradle in which she
lies to the promenade deck she rises to a height of fifty feet or more,
and she looks as immovable as a fortress.
Nothing is more wonderful than the launching of such a vessel. Imminent
peril seems to attend the operation; she must topple over, thinks the
uninitiated observer, or if she succeeds in reaching the water, she
must plunge against the opposite bank of the narrow river. But at the
appointed time she glides into the water as smoothly as an eel, and
once afloat she is held in check by cables attached to the shore. Her
engines have got to be put on board, and fully six months more elapse
before she is ready for sea. If she is complete within two years of the
day the contract for her was awarded, her builders have done well.
Let us now look at the “plant” which is necessary for building such
a ship, and to see this in perfection we will visit Fairfield, which
divides honors with the great ship-yard of Messrs. James & George
Thomson, at Clydebank.
IV.
A wonderful place is Fairfield. When a ship is taken in hand for
construction the design for each and every part is proceeded with
simultaneously. It is not the keel first, then the frames, then the
reverse frames, then the flooring, and so on, as it is in smaller
ship-yards. Keel, frames, flooring are put in hand together, and the
hull plates are ready before the keel is in position. Simultaneously,
too, the sawmill is preparing the planks which are to cover the
steel decks: the joiners are at work on the saloon and cabins; the
upholsterers are cutting and stitching the brocades, plushes, and silks
which are so freely used in modern ocean steamers; the chain-maker is
forging the cables, and each department is busying itself with its own
share, conscious that what it produces will presently be sought to take
its place in the rapidly progressing whole.
How rapid the progress is may be judged from the fact that on August
14, 1885, the steel intended for a North German Lloyd steamer began to
enter the yard, and exactly one month later the ship was in frame with
keelsons and beams in position, and the plating for the hull, rolled to
waterline shape, lying alongside.
The works cover nearly seventy-four acres, and lie on the south side
of the Clyde, about three miles from Glasgow, with which city they
are connected by a continuous chain of docks, warehouses, and other
ship-yards. Not very long ago this great inclosure was arable land
attached to a comfortable mansion which still retains a few vestiges of
its former dignity. But now the verdure has been trampled down and the
face of the earth is hidden by paving-stones and iron rails. The river
is inky, and the smoke lying in a brown fog over-head is ever being
replenished from the high chimneys of the neighborhood.
The scene within the high brick walls which keep out idlers is
exhilarating but scarcely picturesque. All the materials which enter
into the construction of a modern ship are visible in profusion. A
bird’s-eye view reveals great stacks of timber, iron, and steel; a
net-work of rails which connect the works with all the principal lines
converging at Glasgow; long brick sheds, and edging the water-front the
launching-slips, where as many as fifteen vessels have been in course
of construction at the same time. There the great hulls of many of
the most famous Atlantic liners have been put together; this was the
birthplace of all the new ships of the North German Lloyd line; of the
Arizona, the Alaska, the Oregon, the Umbria, and the Etruria.
Running at right angles from the river, a dock has been excavated,
large enough to accommodate a vessel of twelve thousand tons, and after
launching, the steamers are hauled in here to receive their engines and
boilers. Immediately in the rear of the launching-slips there is an
enormous shed, with a roof of glass and iron, where all the iron-work
for the hulls of fifteen ships has been handled at one time. Within it
gangs of workmen, each skilled in a specialty, carry on that part of
the work which belongs to them. Some are carriers of angle steel or
iron, others receivers of angle iron, which they place in the furnaces
until the metal is at such a heat that it can be shaped to suit the
water-lines of the vessel for which it is intended. Others still are
busy with reverse frames and with the bending of plates; others with
funnels, ventilators, and skylights.
[Illustration: The Manganese Bronze Propeller-Blade of the Wrecked
Steamer Mosel, after it had beaten upon a reef.]
There is a special department for the casting of manganese bronze,
which is used for the blades of propellers. Standing against a wall
not far off is a blade saved from the propeller of the wrecked steamer
Mosel. She ran ashore on a rocky coast, and her propeller played upon
the reef like a flail upon a threshing-floor without break or fracture;
so great is the strength of the bronze that the only effect upon it was
a feathering of the edges as revealed by the blade in question.
Then we see the engineering, forge, and pattern shops. Forgings of
steel are made which weigh as much as thirty tons, as in the case of
the crank-shafts of the new North German Lloyd steamers. A shafting
of that weight is lifted as easily, and with as little commotion, as
a bar of angle iron, and placed on a table to be finished. All the
tools are of enormous size, and nearly all of them are adaptations
of the well-known turning-lathe. Either the tool turns or the work
turns. A steamer’s cylinders are bored out with a bar, the bar moving.
In turning a thrust-shaft the shaft moves, not the tool. In facing a
condenser the tool moves, not the condenser. Cutting, planing, and
turning are all accomplished by modifications of the lathe. There
are in all nearly forty lathes, vertical, horizontal, and oblique,
each gnawing at some vital part of a ship, and there—there is the
“devil.” This is the name given by the workmen to an immense metallic
disk, over sixteen feet in diameter, which bores through solid steel
at the rate of two and a quarter inches in four minutes. The workmen
fill what standing room there is between propeller blades, cylinder
liners, piston-valves, and sole-plates; they swarm like ants, each gang
carrying on its specified work with diligence and singleness of purpose.
Let the reader figure to himself the gleaming tools, the whirring
machinery for the distribution of power, the begrimed toilers, the
ponderous masses of iron and steel—now swinging in mid-air, then
clutched to the breast of an excoriating monster like the “devil;”
let his eye rest on those forty lathes all busy at once, eating with
unwearying jaws into the metal fed them, and on the plane which shaves
an armor-plate as if it were a deal board; then let him fill his ears
with the groaning, creaking, hissing, grinding, shrieking of all this
activity, and add to it the battle-like din of the boiler-makers. Thus
he may know what Fairfield is like.
Ranging up and down these work-shops, and pausing before this or that
lathe, we see in undistinguishable fragments the engines that are
designed to propel the seven or eight thousand-ton ship; then the
pieces are gathered together and united in a pit; power is applied from
an auxiliary engine, and the work of final adjustment is proceeded
with. That completed, the engines are again taken apart and transferred
to the vessel for which they have been built.
[Illustration: A Stern View, showing Twin Screws.]
Has the reader ever stood in the engine-room of an ocean steamer when
she was plunging through an Atlantic gale at the rate of seventeen
or more knots an hour? Even if he has done so, and been awed by the
experience, it is not likely that he has been able to fully realize the
immensity of the power exerted. He needs some standard of comparison,
and for that purpose we may offer him the ancient galley, and repeat a
passage from the address made by Sir Frederick Bramwell at the meeting
of the British Association last September: “Compare a galley, a vessel
propelled by oars, with the modern Atlantic liner.... Take her length
as some 600 feet, and assume that place be found for as many as 400
oars on each side, each oar worked by three men, or 2,400 men; and
allow that six men under these conditions could develop work equal to
one horse-power; we should have 400 horse-power. Double the number of
men, and we should have 800 horse-power, with 4,800 men at work, and at
least the same number in reserve, if the journey is to be carried on
continuously. Contrast the puny result thus obtained with the 19,500
horse-power given forth by a large prime-mover of the present day,
such a power requiring on the above mode of calculation 117,000 men at
work and 117,000 men in reserve; and these to be carried in a vessel
less than 600 feet in length. Even if it was possible to carry this
number of men in such a vessel, by no conceivable means could their
power be utilized so as to impart to it a speed of twenty knots an
hour.”
[Illustration: The City of New York ready for Launching.]
[Illustration: Model of a Steamer Designed to Cross the Atlantic in
Five Days.]
Huge as the several parts are, their adjustment is a matter of extreme
delicacy, and yet so carefully is it accomplished that a steamer may
leave the builder’s hand at Fairfield and proceed on a voyage of twenty
days or more without once having to slacken speed on account of her
engines.
It is a fair sight to see the men come to work when the bell rings in
the morning. When the yard is fully occupied there are between six and
seven thousand of them, and the wages paid have amounted in one year to
one million eight hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.