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426 and auxiliary machinery, including ma- chinery on deck, expressing the patient research and achievement of the ship- yards; on the other, the selective process | by which, from a multitude of ideas, the steamers have, through the medium ot their responsible administrators, gathered to themselves, and sometimes created, the especial features and im- provements of detail necessary for the successful oncarrying of their individual trade. Trade Determines Types Owners of large fleets of costly ton- nage possess in their superintendents and technical staff an aid to policy which, to owners and builders alike, is of great value. The business of the technical officials is, among other things, to collate the observations and reports of the executive afloat or at the quay- side, and to reduce this experience to exact terms. But, with an occasional exception, a company’s superintendents usually turn their attention to these mat- ters as part of a wider range of duties which preclude them from concentrated and continued regard of the finer prob- lems of form and power. They are more intimately concerned in keeping ‘themselves informed of each. develop- ment in the multifarious equipment, furniture and apparel of ships, with es- pecial reference to the trades in which their owner’s fleet may be engaged. Generally it may be said that the di- mensions of a steamer, the details of her passenger accommodation, the dis- posal of her carrying spaces, the choice and arrangement of her cargo gear, and, above all, the determination of her eco- nomical speed and bunker capacity (speed also involving some considera- tion of the fineness or otherwise of her lines and hull contours), are matters which naturally grow from the external conditions of the trade in which she is engaged, and that one chief business of the shipowner is to maintain an alert and critical mind so that, in the projec- tion of new ships, the accumulation of experience and suggestion may enable him to mark, in his later steamers of any given type, some advance upon their predecessors. The chief function of the shipowner, if he is to get the best values out of his relations with the shipbuilder, is a digestive one. In other words, it is up to him to accumulate data from voyage to voyage; to determine how much of that which is new in the way of ideas can be usefully applied; to reject that which is not germane to profitable and efficient running, and to pass on the se- lected data to his ship designer and ship- builder. In the early marshalling of these matters shipowners must rely upon their expert staff, but the final re- MARINE REVIEW sponsibility of decision must, for good or ill, rest with themselves. In considering the design and equip- ment of a ship, inside, outside and in the engine-room, the paramount considera- tion of the shipowner must always be that she shall be capable of earning her living. To do this she has to pay and feed her crew; to pay all her running and port expenses and the cost of her upkeep; to provide a return for those who are immediately responsible for her management and their staffs; to pay in- terest on the capital invested in her; and to put by year by year money in suffi- ciency for her own replacement when- ever, by casualty or the lapse of time, that may become necessary. Moreover, as there is no standing still in shipbuild- ing policy, she must, in the course of her life, provide not only an amount equal to her own original cost, but the larger amount necessary to produce a succes- sor, of larger tonnage, more elaborate fittings and improved type, whereby that successor may exhibit the experience of the intervening years to all concerned, not least of whom is the traveling pub- lic. And here a word may be said on the subject of the responsibilities which the shipowner and the shipbuilder must for better or worse, shoulder together. The shipbuilder is legally quit of his liability when he has fulfilled his contract, but it is pretty safe to say that his sense of responsibility does not end there; the long test is, however, with the ship- owner. But the projection of a group of expensive passenger steamers of uni- form type, which may involve a capital outlay running into many millions of pounds sterling, demands, in the most fortunate circumstances, from _ ship- owner and shipbuilder alike, a certain quality of courageous judgment, and not a little imagination, besides the basic at- tributes of knowledge and experience. Need Expert Study In the best practice of later years it has been the custom of our great shipbuild- ing firms to recruit promising material from our universities and technical col- leges and to train the young man so se- lected for the work of design and con- struction. From the ranks of these cadets there have inevitably emerged men whose attainments have marked them for the highest responsibilities; and it is to be recognized that, in the past, appreciation of the value of early technical training by the heads of the shipbuilding and engineering trades was not lessened by the fact that they them- selves had, in many cases, passed through the workshops as young men and had had, in their early middle years, to gather by laborious effort that equip- ment of technical and scientific knowl- November, 1924 edge which the lack of specialized edu- cational facilities had, at the outset, denied to them. To the joy of personal achievement and fulfilled ambition, these + pioneers must have added the happy re- flection that their travail had not been in vain and that their own laborious ex- perience had widened and smoothed the road for the younger generation. That the younger men were eager and able to grasp the opportunity, there are to- day a number of sufficiently striking ex- amples. It is upon these trained scienti- fic minds that the shipbuilder and ship- owner are able to rely for secondary aid, for by the light of their intellects is the path kept, through a maze of conflict- ing theories and ideas, which leads to the well of constructive truth. Lean On _ Shipbuilder If, therefore, it be true that, as re- gards detail, the shipowner must look to his own knowledge and experience, it is equally true that he must, as re- gards the forces of propulsion and re- sistance, primarily rely upon the untir- ing research of the shipbuilder and his expert staff and upon their familiarity with the two interdependent factors of power and modeling and the multitude of considerations and detail which on those factors depend. The institution of the modern testing tank, with its almost daily development of efficiency, has given shipowners a sense of security in accepting shipbuild- ers’ hull designs which formerly was denied to them, and it is possible today to forecast the performances of a com- mercial ship, in all varieties of trim, with a degree of accuracy which is valued alike by owners, loading brokers’ super- intendents, and, finally, by those respon- sible for the safe navigation of the ship from port to port. In staple trades, regularity of service tends to minimize the necessity for very high speed, and it is this fact which en- _ables a steamer of moderate power to operate to the satisfaction of shippers and consignees. Take, as an extreme in- stance, a series of shipments of grain in bulk. Once the initial consignment has been delivered, provided that suc- ceeding consignments arrive at reason- ably regular intervals, it is a matter ‘of little moment whether they cross the seas at 8 knots, or 10 or 12. Allowing 14 days in port at each end, it will take, on a round voyage of 10,000 miles, 10 steamers each of 5,000 deadweight tons to maintain a weekly delivery of 5,000 tons at the outward and homeward ter- minals. These steamers will travel at an economical speed of, say, 10 knots; will therefore be moderately manned, moderately engined, and of moderate coal consumption; and will earn the gen- eral market rate of freight. To convey : : E