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Diesel Mount Hood, a Western-Built Motorship, Comp ge--Her Diesel-Type Engines Prove Economical in Operation Voya IESEL-TYPE engines used by D the Globe line on several of its fleet have offered the company the opportunity to determine the econ- omy of this means of propulsion. The line has two vessels equipped with these engines and has two motor schooners equipped with semidiesel engines. The Mount Hoop is one of the fleet equipped with diesel-type engines. This vessel has a keel length of 285 feet, an extreme beam of 44 feet 7% inches, and a molded depth of 26 feet. She was built at Portland, Oreg. by the Supple-Ballin Shipbuilding Corp. and was the first vessel built on the new type of con- struction designed by F. A. Ballin. She has double-diagonal planking and steel plate topsides. Her type was fully de- scribed in the September, 1917, issue of Tue Marine ReEvIEw. The vessel was designed to reduce the structural weight of wooden vessels without sacrificing strength. The actual structural weight of the Mount Hoop, fully equipped and ready for sea, is nearly 25 per cent less than that of a wooden vessel of the conventional de- sign. She has carried a total dead- weight, including fuel and stores, of practically 4600 tons. Her gross ton- nage is 2909 and her net tonnage 2433. She is equipped with two sets of 8- cylinder engines, full diesel type. She snes Prove letes a Long Successful has sufficient fuel capacity to give her a steaming radius of 15,000 miles, on a fuel consumption of 30 barrels, or 4 tons of oil per day. _ When the engines for the Mount Hoop were built, they were the largest diesel-type engines for marine work constructed in the United States. Since then, however, the McIntosh & Seymour Corp., Auburn, N. Y., have contracted to build for the Emergency Fleet cor- poration some marine diesel engines of between 800 and 900 horsepower. The two engines on the Mount Hoop have a capacity of but 500 horsepower each. Favor Twin Screws The preference of many shipowners is for two diesel engines in a_ vessel driving twin screws. The engines in the Mount Hoop are 8-cylinder each, 1248-inch diameter by 18-inch stroke. They were the largest commercial diesel engines produced up to 1918. After a voyage to South America and _ back, 'some 8000 miles, it was reported that there had been no trouble whatever from hot bearings or lubrication, nor had any weakness of any of the parts developed. The Mount Hoop left San Francisco on Oct. 17, 1918, and arrived at Arica, Chile, on Nov. 14, proceeding to Pisagua, Chile, on Dec. 12. She carried a cargo LOOKING FORWARD IN THE ENGINE ROOM OF THE MOUNT H ARE 500 HORSEPOWER EACH AND DRIVE TWIN SCREWS 00D--THE 8-CYLINDER ENGINES 298 iceessful of lumber on her way down and pro- ceeded back with a cargo of nitrates, She arrived at Mobile, Ala., on Feb..5, 1919, and was drawn up on a marine railway for painting and ordinary re- pairs. The trip down to Chile was approximately 4700 miles and the trip back to Mobile was about 3200 miles, The first fuel oil for these engines was contracted for in 1917, at $1.87 per barrel on the Pacific. The oil was delivered early in 1918. The price of oil during the war was $3.60 per barrel, although another of the Globe's vessels paid as high as $12 per barrel at Arica, Chile. The present price of oil for these engines is $2.30 per barrel. Ac- cording to the log of the ship, between 1000 and 1200 gallons of oil were consumed each day. Counting the few hundred barrels taken on in South America, the ship had taken aboard 2400 barrels of oil for the trip both ways, and had 800 barrels in her tanks upon reaching Mobile. In other words she had burned approximately 1600 barrels of oil to make a voyage of 8000 miles. The average consumption of oil was 0.2 barrels or 8.4 gallons per mile. The Mount Hoop transported 3800 tons of cargo on the voyage south and brought back 4100 tons of cargo. It is, there- fore, estimated that the vessel burned 0.0021 gallons of oil per cargo ton-mile. Estimating this at the present market value of oil, the average fuel cost of the trip was $0.01155 per 100 ton-miles. The economy of diesel engines on freight boats it is pointed out is clearly demonstrated by the experience on the Mount Hoop. With larger engines on larger boats corresponding economies in operation can be effected. The Globe line, naturally, had its initial trouble procuring engineers for the Mount Hoop and her sister ship, the Mount BAKER, but an entirely satisfactory staff of engineers has since been built up. It has been necessary to take engineers wherever they could be found. In some instances their men had reported experi- ence in the machine shops building this type of engine, and in other cases not. Some had not even had sea experience. The difficulty of the future will be to find engineers with the technical knowl- edge of diesel design and the proper sea experience. At this time the gov- ernment has not even devised an exam- ination for engineers which would meet the requirements. The old forms of seamen's examinations have been ap- plied and considerable latitude permitted