The Saga Of Ships | Brooke Bond | PG Tips tea cards offered in the interest of education
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[The Saga Of Ships 01]
01 EGYPTIAN SHIP
Pictures survive of Egyptian ships from as early as 4000 BC. On the River Nile, they used sailing vessels which could he sailed up river against the stream, and rowed or paddled down stream. As far back as 3000 BC. the Egyptians were even building large wooden ships, made of short and narrow planks because they lacked big trees. The ships had overhanging ends and a hawser which led the length of the ship. This hawser was tautnted to prevent the ends sagging. There were long steering oars over either quarter and the squarcsail was set from a rall mast.
[The Saga Of Ships 02]
02 ARGO
The voyage of the Argonauts was the very beginning of maritime exploration. Jason built a 50-oared galley, the Argo (meaning Swift) and cruised in it from Colchis, in Greece, past Mount Pelion, through the Dardanellcs and into the Black Sea in search of the Golden Fleece, which he successfully acquired The homeward voyage was accomplished despite extraordinary dangers and hardships, including a passage between dashing rocks and the back- breaking porterage of the ship dragged over land an rollers. The Argo was long preserved on the beach at Colchis as the famous prototype of the Greek sea-going galley.
[The Saga Of Ships 03]
03 ROMAN GRAIN SHIP
These merchant ships, running between Alexandria in Egypt and Ostia in Italy, supplied the grain which fed Rome. They had a high stern, a low bow, a big square sail amidships and a small square sail on a mast leaning forward in the bows. There were steering oars on each quarter and the sails were furled by ropes running through lead rings. Passengers were carried. In AD. 62 Saint Paul was wrecked on Malta, while voyaging towards Rome in a grain ship with 276 persons on board. She drove ashore at dawn with 4 anchors over the stern.
[The Saga Of Ships 04]
04 VIKING SHIP
In the ninth and tenth centuries AD. Vikings set our from the creeks of Scandinavia to raid the coasts of Europe. They had already reached Dorset in 789 AD. Fine examples of their long- ships have been preserved in burial mounds, that found st Gokstad in Norway dating from 900 AD. Thin ship is built of oak with overlap- ping planks rivered together, is 78 fret long by 16 feet 9 inches beam and was rowed by 16 oars a side, with a mast and sail. There was a rudder in the form of a steering oar over the starboard quarter.
[The Saga Of Ships 05]
05 CRUSADING SHIP
During the three crusades, l096-1191, fleets of northern and southern ships mingled as troop transports, and the seamen of north and south studied each others' shipbuilding practices and seafaring methods. The northern ship still had a viking ship hull, enlarged and with 'castles' added fore and aft to provide fighting decks above the merchants' cabins. They had a square sail on a single mast. The Mediterranean ships were generally larger and were rowed or sailed with lateen sails on two masts, and two steering oars. They were carvel-built with the edges of the planks Bush instead of overlapping as in the North.
[The Saga Of Ships 06]
06 PORTUGUESE CARAVEL
The caravel was a small fishing vessel or coaster with two, three or four masts, generally rigged with triangular lateen sails, although sometimes there were square sails on the foremast. It was a very handy vessel and could beat to windward in narrow waters. The type was chosen by the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) who sent a number of expeditions down the African coast. The expeditions got further south year by year bur Henry died before the Equator was reached. Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 and Vasco da Gama reached India ten yearn later.
[The Saga Of Ships 07]
07 SANTA MARIA
In 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic from Spain to find a new route to China and India, and discovered America. His flagship the Santa Maria was a typical three masted ship of the period with a mainnail, foresail, spritsail and main ropsail, all square- sails, and the mitten, a triangular fore and aft lateen sail. The ship is unlikely to have been more than 75 feet in length overall. She carried a ship's boar on deck. A poop deck aft had cabins below and she probably had a high forecastle over the stem. Her crew numbered about 45 men.
[The Saga Of Ships 08]
08 GOLDEN HIND
Francis Drake, the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, left Plymonth Sound in the Pelican with four other ships in December 1577. In August 1578 his ship was renamed the Golden Hind to celebrate entering the Straits of Magellan (The hind was the family crest of Drake's patron Sir Christopher Hatton.) The squadron separated and Drake completed the voyage alone, bringing much Spanish treasure home in his little ship. She was of only 100 tons and was about 75 feet in length overall by 19 feet beam. The Spaniards Drake took prisoner thought his ship a stout well-found galleon -a compliment indeed.
[The Saga Of Ships 09]
09 ARK ROYal (GalLEON)
A galleon built at Deptford for Sir Walter Raleigh in 1587, the Ark Ralelgh was bought into the Royal Navy and re-named the Ark Royal. She was the Lord High Admiral's Flagship against the Spanish Armada, was 100 feet long on the keel by 37 feet beam, and carried a varied armament of 44 guns. Lord Howard, the Admiral, was pleased with his English galleon, which he considered the odd ship in the world for all conditions. The galleon was a new type of warship invented by the Portuguese, fast and weatherly, and used for carrying treasure home safely across the Atlantic.
[The Saga Of Ships 10]
10 MADRE DE DIOS
This huge portuguese Carrach (her name means Mother of God) war captured in 1592 by an English squadron under Sir John Borough and brought into Dartmouth. Her great size astonished her captors She carried 700 persons se and it rook 14 men to steer her. She was 1,600 tons, was armed with 32 brass guns, and measured 165 feet from bulkhead to stern, with a 31 foot beam. The mainmast was 121 feet high. She had three decks and drew 31 feet of water. Her cargo was spices, drugs, silks, calicos and jewels (the were plundered and never recovered).
[The Saga Of Ships 11]
11 MAYFLOWER
Little is known of this famous ship, which carried the pilgrim fathers across the Atlantic to Plymouth Plantation in 1620. An old ship of 180 tons, she may have fought against the Spanish Armada, and traded between London and French ports such as La Rocheile and Bordeaux, carrying cloth and wine. Christopher Jones, her master, lived at Rotherhithe and there is a memorial to him at St. Mary's Church there. The dimensions of the Maypower were about 90 feet length overall by 26 feet beam. A replica was built at Brixham in 1957 and sailed to America by a British crew.
[The Saga Of Ships 12]
12 SOVEREIGN OF THE SEAS
The levy of Ship Money, which helped to lose Charles I his kingdom, provided for the building of the Sovereign of the Seas, a ship remarkable for her size, beauty and heavy armament. Her 1,500 tons Trinity House had derided as 'beyond the art or wit of man,' yet Phineas Pett, the able Master Shipwright, launched her safely from Woolwich Yard in 137. She was a three-decker, mounting 102 brass guns. Her ornamentation was so superbly entravagant that the Dutch knew her in the later wars as the'Golden DeDevil'.ln 1696 she was accidentally burnt at Chatham.
[The Saga Of Ships 13]
13 MARY
Charles II learned to sail as a boy when in Jersey on his way to exile. In Holland he delighted in sailing Dutch yachts and on his Restoration was presented with a line yacht by the Burgomasters of Amsrerdam. She was the Mary, was 50 feet long by 18 feet 6 inches bram and had a windowed cabin aft, also leeboards, and little guns firing salutes through circular gunporrs. The Mary had a cutter rig with fore and aft mainsail, square topsail and a stayrail and jib. Charles II delighted in her, and other yachts were later built so that he could race on the Thames.
[The Saga Of Ships 14]
14 NONSUCH
In 1650 a Mr. Page built at Wivenhoe in Essex a little square-rigged ketch of 43 tons and some 50 feet length overall by 15 feet beam, He sold her to the Navy, whose records show that she was the smallest of their ketches. In 1667 she was sold to the promoters of the Hudson Bay Company and in 1668 she made an exploratory voyage right into the Bay, where she wintered in the ice before returning to England safely the following Spring. A replica was built for the Company at Appledore in 1968.
[The Saga Of Ships 15]
15 HMS CENTURION
A 60-gun ship built at Plymouth in 1731. In 1740 Commodore Anson hoisted his broad pennant in the Centurion at Spithead and sailed with a squadron round Cape Horn to harass the Spaniards in the Pacific Ocean. This was a momentous voyage, principally for its misfortunes. The squadron scattered and ships turned back or were shipwrecked. Finally Anson continued alone and captured a Spanish treasure galleon from Manila. In this way he made the voyage an outstanding financial success and himself a Lord. The Centurion afterwards helped to capture Quebec in 1759.
[The Saga Of Ships 16]
16 HM BARK ENDEAVOUR
The famous little ship in which Captain Cook circumnavigated the globe, 1768-1770, observed the Transit of Venus, charted New Zealand and the east coast of Australia and searched in vain for the mythical great southern continent. The Endeavour was a small North Sea collier, 100 feet long by 30 feet beam, 368 tons, built at Whitby and purchased by the Admiralty because she was roomy, strong and a handy ship for the exploration of unknown coasts. She was very well fitted out and carried 94 persons, including Sir Joseph Banks and his staff for the study of Natural History.
[The Saga Of Ships 17]
17 SOUth SEA ISLAND BOAT
The boats of New Guinea are picturesque because of their high sails between two spars cut so that the ends of the spars curl round like claws. The hulls are formed of two dug-out canoes tide-by-side, joined together by beams which also support a bamboo deck and deck houses. The craft are about 60 feet long by 50 feet wide, with the two sails hoisted on two masts stepped abreast and amidships. Captain Cook described these double canoes of the Pacific in his log, and in craft like this whole peoples even migrated occasionally between islands.
[The Saga Of Ships 18]
18 HMS VICORY
In 1759, the Year of Victories in the Seven Years' War, a new three-decker was laid down at Chatham Dockyard. She was launched in 1765, after the war war over: HM.S. Victory, 102 guns, a First Rate, 222 feet length overall, 186 feet lower gun deck, 52 feet beam and 2,142 tons. Her first battle was as Admiral Keppel's flagship against the French in 1778: then as Admiral Jervis's against the Spanish in 1797: then Admiral Nelson's against the French and Spanish in 1805. Nelson died in her cockpit. Today she can be seen in Ponsmouth Dockyard.
[The Saga Of Ships 19]
19 GREAThead'S LIFEBOAT
In 1790 Henry Greathead (1757-1816), boat builder of South Shields, designed a lifeboat which was built by public subscription and presented to the Duke of Northumberland who stationed it at North Shields. The boat was 30 feet long and 10 fret wide, required a crew of twelve men and rowed easily in either direction. It had 5 oars a side and was steered with a long oar at either end. It was very buoyant and almost impossible to capsize as it was lined inside and outside with cork. 20 persons could be saved at a time. This was the first true lifeboat.
[The Saga Of Ships 20]
20 AN EAST INDIAN
The Honourable East India Company's fleet of well-found merchant ships between 1599 and 1832 enjoyed the monopoly of British trade with the East. They represented some of the finest ships of the mercantile marine. Outwardly they differed little from the frigates of the Royal Navy and indeed were sufficiently well armed to beat off most privateers. On a famous occasion in 1804 the homeward bound Fast India Company Fleet under Commodore Nathaniel Dance encountered a French squadron and so deceived them by flying naval pennants, and forming a line of battle, that the French retired before an apparently superior force.
[The Saga Of Ships 21]
21 REVENUE CUTTER
The cutter rig was regarded as essentially English in character. The Revenue Cutter was designed for speed so as to catch the wily smuggler. She was given the fastest hull farm and greatest sail area possible. During the period of the Napoleonic Wars it was said that the French Armies marched in English boars paid for by the smuggling of brandy and silks to English country gentlemen. Revenue Cutters tried to put a stop to this smuggling. A Revenue Cutter could measure 130 tons, and be 85 feet long by 24 feet beam, with a draught of 11 feet, carrying twelve guns.
[The Saga Of Ships 22]
22 TS FOUDROYANT (EX-H.M.S. trINCOMalEE)
H.M.S. Trincomalee was a 46-gun frigate, teakbuilt at Bombay in 1817 for the Royal Navy by the Honourable East India Company. Her gundeck was 150 feet long by 40 feet and her tonnage 1,066, with a ship's company of 220. She served two commissiona, in the West Indian and Pacific 1847-1857. Then, when wooden war ships were discarded, she was kept on as a training ship. In private ownership, and renamed the Foudroyant after Nelson's flag-ship, a Trust now runs her as a Holiday Training Ship for youngerers, in Porrsmouth Harbour.
[The Saga Of Ships 23]
23 HMS BEAGLE
The Beagle was one of a class of some thirty 10-gun brigs built between 1808 and 1825. She was launched at Woolwich Yard in 1820; of 235 tons, she measured 90 feet in length on her upper deck, by 24 feet beam, She was converted to a surveying vessel by adding a mizzen mast and a poopdeck. Between 1825 and 1841 she surveyed the coast of South America and the Magellan Strairs and part of Australia. Charles Darwin went round the world in her in 1831-36: under the command of Captain Fitzroy and from his studies composed his books 'A Naturalst's Voyage', and 'The Origin of Species'.
[The Saga Of Ships 24]
24 GEORDIE BRIG
The coal trade produced many fine seamen, with Captain Cook pre-eminent. By 1800 London consumed joo shiploads month and the trade was organised on a competitive basis with the colliers, often brigs, striving to be the first to be loaded and unloaded. The northeountrymen, the Geordies, were tough characters, and their ships were bluff bowed and very strongly built. They were often unloaded into carts driven out to the brigs high and dry on some open beach at low water. The Geordies were amongst the firer British seamen to demand better pay and conditions aboard.
[The Saga Of Ships 25]
25 CHARLES W MORGAN
The wooden ship Charles W Morgan ship was finally mooread at Mystic Seaport, Connecticut in 1941 Built at New Bedford in 1841 she made her last of 37 whaling voayges in 1921 She is of 314 tons, 105 feet in length and 28 feet in beam. Five whale boats hung in davits, and the whale was harpooned and lanced from the boats and cut up alongride. The blubber was boiled down in the try works on deck and the oil stowed in casks. Whalebone and ambergris, were other valuable products. Ships like this might cruise for years befure the hold was filled
[The Saga Of Ships 26]
26 ESKIMO KAYAK
Eskimo kayaks are made of sealskin stretched over a frame of whalebone or wood. They are double ended and from fifteen to eighteen feet long with a beam of about 3 feet 6 inches. The fisherman sits in the middle of the boat which is decked-in, except for a round manhole. No two boats are exactly the same and Greelanders take the greatest pride in their kayaks and fittings. The Eskimo is very skilfill in his fishing techniques and can roll the boat over and back without it shipping water, be because an apron keeps the cockpit watertight
[The Saga Of Ships 27]
27 SS GREAT WESTERN
The Great Western Steamship Company was founded in 1836 to build a steamship to cross the Atlantic, as a sea extension, from Bristol, of the Great Western Railway. The Great Western, designed by I K Brunel and built at Bristol, was launched in 1837, a wooden auxiliary paddle steamer, remarkable for her great strength. She was 1,320 tons,length 212 feet by beam 34 feet. In 1838 she crossed from Bristol to New York in 15¼ days, her engines being stopped twice. The first steamship constructed for trans-Atlantic service, she carried 148 passengers, mostly in first class.
[The Saga Of Ships 28]
28 CHINESE JUNK
There are many types of sea-going Chinese Junks. They usually have a high stern and overhanging bow, square on deck but fine at the waterline. They have no keels but a deep rudder lowered in a trunk, and from two to five masts and lug sails stiffened with battens which can be quickly reefed. The hold is divided into water right compartments and let out to merchants. The inland river trade of China is also carried by junks of many varieties. In 1851 the Great exhibtion was visited by the Keying, a junk of 400 tons sailing from Canton to Landon via New York.
[The Saga Of Ships 29]
29 SS GREAT EASTERN
This immense iron ship of 18,915 tons (not exceeded for forty years) was built at Millwall in the Thames by I K Brunel and J S Russell in 1858. She was 680 feet long by 82 feet beam and very strongly built, with a cellular construction, one hull within another with 12 watertight cam- partments. She had five funnels, six masts, bath paddle wheel and screw propulsion, and could steam at 14 knots. Designed to go to Australia and back wahout refuelling she proved a failure, built before her time, but was successful in laying telegraph cables across the Atlantic.
[The Saga Of Ships 30]
30 HMS WARRIOR
Shell fire was experienced by wooden warships during the Crimean War with disastrous effect. So the French built the iron-clad La Gloire and the British answer was the Warrier built of iton at Blackwall in 1860. She was 380 feet long by 58 feet beam and 9,210 tons. Fully rigged with sails, her engines gave her a speed of 14 knots and her graceful clipper bow concealed a ram. She was armed with 68 and 110 pounders (the heaviest guns afloat), and when first built she could have defeated single-handed the world's navies. She is now afloat as an ailing jetty in Milford Haven.
[The Saga Of Ships 31]
31 THE TAEPING AND ARIEL
The Great Tea Race of 1866 was the most exciting of all. 16 clipper ships at Foochow were hurrying to get the new season's tea crop loaded and get away. The Taeping and Alriel built in 1963 and 1865 respectively (the Ariel the larger at 852 tons) left together and met again off the Lizard. They raced up the English Channel, the Taeping picked up the faster tug off Dungeness after a voyage of 99 days for the 9,000 miles, and finally docked 20 minutes ahead of the Ariel. The two ships shared the extra premium of 10/- a ton on the new tea crop.
[The Saga Of Ships 32]
32 SS. GREAT BRITAIN
The Great Briton, designed by I K Brunel, was built of iron at Bristol, and launched in 1843 289 feet long by 50½ feet beam and 3,270 tons. She was the largest ship afloat, carrying 360 passengers, and remarkable for her six masts and screw propulsion. She was the first iron screw ocean-going ship in the world, and immensely strong with transverse bulkheads and six water-tight compartments. In 1847 she was salvaged, after a winter on the rocks off Ireland, virtually unharmed. Her engines were removed in 1882. She put into the Falkland Islands in 1886 and now remains there as a hulk.
[The Saga Of Ships 33]
33 CUTTY SARK
A composite tea-clipper of 963 tons, 212 feet long by 96 feet beam, built at Dumbarton on the Clyde in 1869. She was built with an iron frame and wooden planking and her 32,000 square feet of canvas could drive her at 17 knots. She was designed to race home with the first crops of tea from China, a voyage lasting 100 days or more. The opening of the Suez Canal drove her from the tea trade but she continued to make fast passages with wool from Australia. She is preserved, in dry dock, at Greenwich.
[The Saga Of Ships 34]
34 PORT JACKSON
A very beautiful and fast iron four-masted barque built at Aberdeen in 1882 as a wool clipper on the London to Sydney run. 286 feet long by 41 feet beam, and 2,516 tons, she carried royals over double topgallant sails on three masts. Messrs. Devitt and Moore owned her between 1906-16 as a sea-going boys' training ship. The Marine Society also provided for 100 boys from their shore-based training ship Arethusa to have some sea-time in the Port Jackson. The Port Jackson was later sold to provide funds to found Pangbourne Nautical College. The ship was torpedoed shortly after she was sold
[The Saga Of Ships 35]
35 TURBINIA
The world's first turbine driven ship is now in a museum at Newcastlc-upon-Tyne. The Hon, Charles Parsons invented the turbine and formed a company to build the Turbinio at Wallsend in 1894 The hull was 100 feet long by 9 feet beam and three propellers were driven by steam jets impinging at high velocity directly on to rotary vanes. The Admiralty showed little interest until Parsons steamed round the 1897 Jubilee Review at Spithead at 34 knots, making the Turbinia the world's fastest ship. HM.S. Viper, the first turbine driven destroyer, was ordered in 1898.
[The Saga Of Ships 36]
36 BRITANNIA
The famous racing cutter Britannia, was built for the Prince of Wales, (later King Edward VII), to G L Watson's design in 1893. She was 121 feet long by 24 feet beam and her original sail area was 10,000 square feet of canvas. She represented Watson's ideal of the best racing yacht he could produce of great size; often modernized, she wan keenly raced by the late King George V until 1935- He died in 1935 and his old cutter was taken to sea and sunk. In 635 races the cutter won 360 prizes. She sailed best in heavy weather.
[The Saga Of Ships 37]
37 HMS DISCOVERY
The Discovery lies alongside the Thames Embankment in London where she serves as a drill ship of the London Division, RN.R. She was built at Dundee on the lines of an Arctic whaler, for the National Antarctic Expedition led by Captain Scott, RN. towards the South Pole in 1901 to 1904, to survey the Great Ice Barrier discovered by Ross. Her length is 200 feet, beam 34 feet, and the is of 1,600 tons. She was built to withstand ice pressure with massive timbers within her bows. To avoid damage from ice her screw lifts and there are no bilge keels.
[The Saga Of Ships 38]
38 ARAB DHOW
Dhow is an English word used indiscriminately to denote a number of different Arab sailing craft. The finest of these, today, are the Booms, of a hundred tons or more, double-ended two-masted trading vessels, sailing out of the Persian Gulf ports and making yearly voyages down the East Coast of Africa. Aft is the poop where the helmsman sits and it is surrounded by the sea chests of crew and merchant passengers. The sails are a large mainsail and a smaller mizzen, bent to great yards, made up of two or three poles bound together
[The Saga Of Ships 39]
39 THE IRISH CURRAGH
Saint Patrick anms Saint brendan made missionary voyages from ireland in boats called curraghs, in th fifth and sixth centuries. Their boats were made of withies covered by hides. Today the fisherman on Ireland;s west coast form Jerry to Donedal use curraghs and tarred calico takes the place of hides. A typical Dingle peninsula curragh is 25 feet long by 4 feet 6 inch beam. It has four thwarts and three rowers who use six 11-foot-long oars. Sometimes cows are carried in the curraghs even though their horns endanger the calico sides of the boat
[The Saga Of Ships 40]
40 THE MAURETANIA
The Mauretania was the most famous ship of the atlantic service. She was built for Cunard at Wallsend-on-Tyne in 1906. Of 31,938 tons, she was 790 feet length overall by 88 feet beam, with seven decks amidships, fifteen watertight bulkheads, and a cellular double bottom. Her Parsons's turbines gave her a speed of 27.4 knots. She won the Blue Riband of the Atlantic from the Kaiser Wilhelm II and held it for 22 years until the Bremen rewon it in 1929. The Mauretania accommodated 560 first-class passengers, and her crew numbered 812 officers and men.
[The Saga Of Ships 41]
41 CAMBRIA
The ketch-rigged coasting barge Cambria, of 79 tons, was built at Greenhithe in l906: approximately 84 feet in length by 20 feet 6 inches beam. Well known through the writings of her owner and skipper, Bob Roberts of Pin Mill,who sails her out of Ipswich. The Thames sailing barge has recently become rare. It developed from the western barges, which brought garden produce to London down the Thames, and from the coasting hoy. The result was a flat bottomed vessel with lee boards and a tall spritsail rig, very handy in shallow estuary waters.
[The Saga Of Ships 42]
42 HMS IRON DUKE
H.M.S. Iron Duke was a battleship of 25,000 tons, 21 knots, built at Portsmouth and launched in 1912. One Of a Class Of 4 and the last coal-burning British battleship, she was 580 feet long by 90 feet beam. Main armament was Io x 13.4-inch guns, with 12 x 6 inch guns added far engaging enemy destroyers in misty weather, as well as 4 x 21-inch torpedo tubes. Her complement was 1,000 men and she cost under £2m. She was Jellicoe's Grand Fleet Flagship at Jutland in 1916 and as a hulk, her batteries defended Scapa Flow in the second World War 1
[The Saga Of Ships 43]
43 ARK ROYal
The first ship of this name was the English flagship which sailed against the Spanish Armada. The Admiralty revived the name for a seaplane carrier in 1914. The third Ark Royal was a 22,000 ton aircraft carrier built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead in 1935. During the second World War Goebbels, the German Minister of Propaganda, repeatedly claimed she had been sunk. She hunted the Graf Spre in 1939 and the Bismarck in 194I. She was finally torpedoed off Gibraltar in November 1941 with the loss of only one of her ship's company of 1,541 men.
[The Saga Of Ships 44]
44 HMS KELLY
The 1837 building programme included the Kelly Class of six Fleet Destroyers. They had a speed of 36 knots and were 348 feet in length by 35 feet beam, complement 183. The main armament was 6 x 4.7-inch guns and 10 x 21-inch torpedo tubes. The Kelly itself was fitted as a Leader. She was commissioned in August 1939 as the ship of Captain (D), Lard Louis Mountbatten and was still working up at Portland when war was declared. She was mined and torpedoed, and salvaged on each occasion, before being sunk by bombs when returning to Alexandria from Crete.
[The Saga Of Ships 45]
45 TANKER
The oil tanker was one of the early examples of specialized ships for bulk cargo. Coal had been simple to ship, but liquid demanded the division of the ship's cargo space into tanks formed by a longitudinal centre line and transverse bulkheads. Special precautions had to be taken because of fire risks and expansion. Tankers of over 4,000 tons were built before 1914 and recently a 312,000 deadweight ton ranker ha!, brought crude oil to Barry bay in south-west Ireland for trans-shipment to refineries. Many new problems arise with the navigation and handling of such ships, which few of the world's ports are able to handle.
[The Saga Of Ships 46]
46 trAWLER
Trawlers are vessels engaged in fishing by towing a drag net or trawl over the sea bed, Modern trawlers are motor vessels with high sheer forward to give focusle accommodation for the crew and dry deck space to sort the catch at sea. A modern development is to have a ramp aft in the middle of the stern down to the water's edge so that the catch is brought straight on board where it is cleaned and immediately frozen. Such stern-trawling freezers are vessels of 2,000 tons and of great endurance.
[The Saga Of Ships 47]
47 HMS REVOLUTION
H.M.S. Revolution, a ballistic nuclear submarine of over 7,000 tons was launched from Vickers Barrow shipyard on 15th September, 1966 by Her Maiesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. She is 425 feet by 33 feet and her welded steel pressure hull enables her to remain submerged for extended periods, and to travel at over 20 knots. She is armed with 16 x 31-foot-long Polaris missiles with a range of 2,500 miles, which can be fired underwater. Her complement is 13 officers and 130 ratings living in a crew space forward, aft of a conventional torpedo flat for 6x2i-inch torpedo tubes.
[The Saga Of Ships 48]
48 SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL
The 300-ton three-masted topsail schooner Sir Winston Churchill was launched in 1966, for the Sail Training Association. She is 150 feet long by 25 feet beam, built by public subscription to offer young men an outlet for the spirit of adventure. About 600 youths are taken for two-week cruiser in her each year. In 1966 she was a class winner in the Tall Ship's race from Plymouth to the Skaw, Denmark. A second schooner has now been added and there is little doubt that a sea voyage in a sailing ship creates an unforgettable impression on the minds of the young crews.
[The Saga Of Ships 49]
49 GYPSY MOth IV
Gypsy Moth IV was built at Gosport to a design by Illingworth and Primrose, so that the indomitable Francis Chichester in 1967 could race her around the world in the track of the fastest sailing ships of the nineteenth century. 53 feet long by 10 feet six inches beam, her long narrow deep hull is very easily driven and she is ketch rigged with 854 square feet of sail area. However, Sir Francis, knighted at Greenwich when he came home, set himself arbitrary targets which he failed to achieve. He sailed 28,500 miles in 227 days at sea, stopping only at Sydney, and spent his 65th birthday on board.
[The Saga Of Ships 50]
50 QUEEN ELIZABEth 2
The new 58,000 ton Cunarder Queen Elizaberh 2 was launched at Clydebank by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and made history when the company refused to accept her from the builders because of turbine failures. These were corrected and the ship is now operating on the North Atlantic routes, and also as the cruise-ship to beat all cruise-ships. She 963 feet long by 105 feet beam and steams at 28½ knots. Her passenger capacity is 2,025, mostly in single and double cabins. The new liner has the highest safety standards and her accommodation facilities have been designed to provide everything far all tastes.
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