Page 13: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (November 2024)

After a few emails on other subjects, I ? nally screwed up The GM of the ship loaded had a quarter inch of mar- my courage and raised the subject. gin so keeping weight low was a requirement as the ship

John responded, and I provide the truth in his own words: made passage.

This then required that the boilers be placed forward

While an interesting story, it is incorrect. To see why, of the turbines, as to place them aft of the turbines, not you need an inboard pro? le. only affected trim, but stability as the boilers would have

You can see where the turbines are located, they are had to be raised above the shaft line.

located as far aft as possible. With both 35 foot and 40-foot cells forward of the for-

This was because the shaft lines, if kept short as possi- ward engine room bulkhead, we could just get the num- ble would only affect the height of aft stowed containers ber of cells required to meet overall container capacity.

below deck, as the shaft line dictates where the bottom The boilers were oversized as operations required the of the aft hatches are located. ship to operate at 80% power on one boiler in case one

It was desirable not to have too many containers aft boiler went down. as the ? ne shape of the hull, particularly aft, provided They also required antique D type boilers as that is all limited buoyancy and too much load back there would the engineers, in the ? eet of WWII converted tonnage, require forward ballasting. knew how to operate. I thought both of these decisions

The ? ne lines of the ship, a block coef? cient close to absurd, as they compromised a dif? cult design even more.

0.5, also made the ship incredibly deadweight limited You can see the boilers are so huge they come through so, in operation, a ton of fuel used was replaced with the main deck.

a ton of ballast. Boilers providing steam to 120,000 HP of turbines www.marinelink.com 13

MR #11 (1-17).indd 13 10/24/2024 2:28:28 PM