The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

prise over 80 per cent of ships of 6000 tons and larger, Lloyd’s reported June 30, 1931 under construction in the United States one diesel ship and 11 steamers; while Great Britain was building 22 diesel ships compared with 7 steamers and Germany, Sweden, Hol- land, Denmark, Norway, Italy, and Spain were building 53 diesel ships and no steamers at all in these sizes. The familiar names of many of the world’s oldest, largest, and most suc- cessful ocean shipping companies are found in the following list of 43 owners of foreign diesel passenger-cargo ship fleets, totaling 431 diesel ships of over 3,000,000 tons. This is only a partial list of foreign diesel ships, but enough to show the competitive menace to 82 American lines, operating 700 vessels of 4,000,000 gross tons. This year, it is estimated that 180 diesel ships of over 1,000,000 tons will be added. The largest passenger liners of over 100,000 shaft horsepower, employ steam at present, due to the limiting size of the diesel—a limit that is rapidly being removed; but the fast cargo, the 16 to 18-knot combined cargo-passenger and the 18 to 24-knot medium sized, mod- erate speed passenger ships of the future are surely destined to be diesel ships, burning, for average speeds, un- der 0.40 pounds of fuel per shaft horse- power compared with over 0.70 pounds. required by the turbo-electric ships un- der recent trials in America. Foreign Passenger-Freight Diesel Ship Fleets No. of Diesel Approx. Owner Ships Tonnage Hamburg-Amerika Line...... eh 200,005 Wilh. Wilhelmsen........... 30 182,477 Andrew Weir and Co........ 30 149,882 Union S.S. Co. of New Zealand 3 32,013 Furness, Withy & Co........ 23 177,936 Cie Generale Transatlantique 1 5,050 Osaka Shosen Kaisha........ 15 97,145 Nippon Yusen Kaisha....... 9 119,287 Sitversline stds sk wc 19 112,151 olen ine, tds oie es wales 7 61,461 White Star line ss:3 2a wile 2 54,000 Rotterdam Lloyd S.S. Co.... 14 140,069 Fred: Olsen: & (Co. 2. ies 10 54,759 Royal Mail Steam Packet ee 5) 72,521 New Zealand Shipping Co.. 6 77,100 Biarioc Company <i. cge se = 13 42,300 Netherland S.S:Coice hae os 18 195,045 Knut Konutsen. foe cas es 4 19,371 Elder Dempster & Co., Ltd.. 19 101,602 Hamburg South Amerika Line 6 67,675 Mao MELONIN os tos oe eed oe ire 10 38,805 Dlowd “EriestinO:cs «kesh ssc 8 65,948 Bip byi8. 0: Cos, Ltda pi. wei 6 57,854 PP Ol RCO sa wii ir eee EL 1373735 Holland-Amerika Line....... 4 38,944 Dampskibs Selskabet (A. P. Mollet) actus tants fea e 6 29,511 Union Castle Mail S.S. Co... 5 82,651 Pacific Steam Navigation Co. 8 61,765 Klaveness & Co.........+.+-- 13 61,208 Pub India Steam Nav. 1 By fo a Seat ae at raRa 4 30,109 Nien teal Larsen & Co........ 9 58,105 Commonwealth & Dominion a he a alg a ceo 7 56,042 Yi barra (7 Clas ics oi. sis viekes 5 44,321 R.M.S.P. & Nelson Line..... 4 56,900 Messageries Maritimes....... 7 81,900 MDa sine sans oleae 9 43,716 Axel Brostrom & Co. ca 2 30,639 Swedish American Line...... 12 72,223 Paht Asiatic Co... 6.6. --s +s 11 81,856 avigazione Generale Italiana 4 61,900 ObUlCh Tine. .s: 1.62 eee ees 5 96,180 Mitsubishi Trading Co...... 5 33,042 orth German Lloyd........ 5 38,436 431 3,341,639 Again, in decided contrast, during the past five years only one modern diesel passenger-freight ship the Crry or New York has been built in the United States, while 489 aggregating approximately 3,700,000 tons have been built abroad. Aside from the 24 diesel converted war built freighters of the shipping board, which are not comparable to modern motorships, only five of the principal American shipping companies operate diesel ships of over 1500 horse- power—the Grace line four, all built abroad—the Kerr line two—the Amer- ican Hawaiian Steamship Co. two—the American South African line one—and the Ford Motor Co. three. Fig. 2. Compared with these 431 foreign pas- senger-freight diesel ships of 3,341,639 tons, as before listed, there are only 17 comparable American motorships of 118,000 tons—in addition to the 24 ob- solete, single purpose, shipping board steamers that were converted to diesel drive. It cannot be too strongly emphasized American Passenger-Freight Diesel Ship Fleets 1500 B.H.P. and Over No. of Diesel Approx. Owner Ships Tonnage Grace Line nco ke se nae 4 27,900 (built abroad) American Hawaiian S.S. Co.. z 15,798 Ford Motor Com ccin tn soe 3 25,652 Keres Winer. cae eee 2 6,972 Glamar?:S: 8: Cover ee tons 1 6,892 American South African Line. 1 10,009 Sun On Cogs oie rates tees 1 11,850 Submarine Boat Corp. 1 3,545 Ocean Motorship Co., Inc. . 1 4,029 Seekonk (Corpecice cee en ois 1 5,083 United Bite Shipping Board 24 153,090 (Converted) 41 270,811 that these foreign shipping companies formerly operated steamships and have now adopted the diesel ship only after actual experience over several years, which has very apparently established decided advantages for this type. These advantages are many and are not at once apparent from a brief survey of merely the comparative cost of diesel and steam machinery and the com- MARINE REVIEw—November, 1931 parative cost of diesel and steam fuel at a particular port. The modern diesel ship has not even been tried out in America, and little is actually known about its net saving in operation over a steamship. The first striking differential be- tween land and marine power plants is the fact that a ship must carry its fuel. A certain amount of fuel may be car- ried in the double bottom and other out of the way compartments in a ship which are not available for cargo. If the ship must carry fuel in excess of that which can be so carried, it en- croaches on the cargo space, demanding Latest type Busch-Sulzer Trunk Piston Diesel, 3300 B. H. P. a larger ship. Also, such excess fuel is not only a non-revenue cargo, but de- mands a larger power plant and con- stant power expense for the transporta- tion of such excess fuel throughout the long life of a ship, of 20 to 30 years. European practice has established that diesel and steam machinery weights including water in the steam boilers and condensers may be accepted as equal, for modern practice. A diesel ship requires about 0.40 pound of fuel per shaft horsepower hour. A steam- ship, depending on the type of steam equipment employed, consumes from 50 to 150 per cent more. Consider a ship of 18 knots speed, 20,- 000 shaft horsepower and fuel bunkers for 5000 miles. The diesel ship must carry 1000 tons of fuel, a steamship from 1500 to 2500 tons. A steamship must accordingly be from 500 to 1500 tons larger to provide bunker capacity for the larger amount of steam fuel; and additional power must be provided —and additional fuel burned—to trans- port at 18 knots this additional weight of fuel. If such a steamer requires 0.75 pound of fuel per shaft horse- power, before leaving port for 10 days sailing she must load 750 tons—20 car- loads—more fuel than a diesel ship. The transportation of this fuel at 18 knots is certainly an added cost to its purchase price. The diesel ship AMERIKA running in the Pacific-European trade is claimed 45