Marine Engineers

[Stanley]

The fog horn at Ardnamurchan light. It was served by a large compressor charging a bank of I think four large receivers. You can see the pipe going into the back of the housing. A haunting sound if you have ever heard one running in fog.

[Wendyf]

A wonderful sound which used to vibrate right through our caravan. We have spent time up there when the fog didn't lift for days on end.

[Stanley]

I envy you Wendy, I never heard it except very faintly once on Eigg I think but we couldn't be sure.

[plaques]

Reminded of a story by a work colleague who was sent to install a refurbished marine diesel down on the south coast somewhere. At the start of the operation the crane lifting the engine slipped and dropped it in the water. Ringing his boss in Bradford he asked what he should do? The answer was quick and to the point. "Get the Bugger out". End of call. Seven days later after retrieving the engine, stripping it, rebuilding it and then installing it, all single handed, he returned to base. Nothing was said except "right here's your next job"!

[Stanley]

Hee hee! I like that! And after all what else could he be told? He must have been a good man and his boss evidently trusted him. It reminds me of an uncorroborated story I heard about the last engine that William Roberts of Nelson made for export to India. It was a big engine and all went well except for the fact that a large casting fell off the crane on unloading in India and couldn't be recovered. Roberts had to cast another part, machine it and send it by sea. I was told that this convinced them that the export trade was too risky and they never made another engine. I think this was in the late 1920s.

[Stanley]

The Garner 6LXB diesel engine. Possibly one of the most reliable engines ever made but why is it here in marine engineers? In the latter part of the 20th century there was a healthy trade in old wagons with these engines. One firm in Nelson at Edge Hill Farm did a good trade in stripping them out, cleaning them up and exporting them to China where they were the favourite engine for small junks and fishing boats. There must be thousands of them still running out there. Gardners also made a specialised 150hp marine engine which was enormous and very slow speed, the crankshaft was about 8ft long. I saw them being built at Patricroft in the late 1970s and the manager told me the waiting list was over five years for them. I wonder how many of them are still running, they must have lasted for ever! I think the favoured engine now is the Caterpillar.

[plaques]

A friend who worked on "injection Maintenance" always used to say. "Layland for loads and Gardners to pull them".

[Stanley]

Lovely engines, I'm a big fan. Hopelessly old fashioned in design but rock solid. Last one I had was a 6LX, 30hp from each pot and the governor cut off at 1750rpm. They had a retard mechanism attached to the throttle, when you lifted your foot off a bit they started pulling harder on a hill. Queer sensation as getting more power by lifting your foot was against nature! The torque curve was very flat and you soon found that if you gave them a chance they would slog away even at low rpm. Very easy on clutches and gearboxes!

[Stanley]

Modern ships are enormous. This is not one of the biggest, only 53,000 tons, an ore carrier built to fit the locks in the Panama canal. They are usually single screw with one large oil engine running at about 150rpm. I find them fascinating.... Mind you, can you remember the Derbyshire? (LINK)

[Pluggy]

Serious Diesel Engine as used in supertankers and large container ships, usually just the one driving a single screw. Something that fascinates me as well. I played with some big diesels in my time in the Navy but nothing anywhere near this scale. They make numerous sizes of the engine with largely identical parts, but they just vary the number of cylinders to get different power outputs.





Sometimes called a cathedral engine for obvious reasons.

[chinatyke]

Is that one of Stanley's barring engines at the bottom left of the first picture?

[Stanley]

Could be. I doubt if it's big enough for a starter motor! And why have that gear on the end of the shaft, it's slow enough to be direct drive. How do you start something this big?

[Invernahaille]

Compressed air. There is an air distributor that selects the piston closest to TDC. When the valve is opened it forces compressed air into the selected cylinder and revolves the engine.

[Thomo]

Spot on Inver.

[Invernahaille]

Thomo,
I would be a poor chief Engineer, if I didn't know how to start a ships engine. LOL

I was going to make up some elaborate story about starting them up with a piece of string . Then thought better of it.

The motor on the Sulzer engine above is called the Turning Gear. It is used to turn the engine to do calibrations and suchlike

Cheers

[Pluggy]

I was going to make up some elaborate story about starting them up with a piece of string . Then thought better of it.

The motor on the Sulzer engine above is called the Turning Gear. It is used to turn the engine to do calibrations and suchlike

Cheers

Next door to a barring engine then.....

I think you's need a fair piece of rope with a knot in it to spin that beggar.

[Invernahaille]

Interesting point. When a ships systems have been completely shut down it is a slow process to get them back on line. This starts with a little one or two pot Perkins or Lister compressor. This creates enough compressed air to start up a generator, usually around 80 PSI. The generators have an air driven starter motor. These are generally around 500-750 Hp. Most ships have three generators two running one backup.
When you have started up a generator and put it on the board, you can then run the main compressors to create enough air to start the main engines. This is usually around 450-500 PSI. Electricity is used supply the main system pumps. Lube oil pumps heat Exchanger pumps etc. It also takes a minimum of two to three people to start a ships engine.

[Stanley]

Nice to get it from the source Robert. Starting big engines has always intrigued me. Same system as steam engines when you think about it but we had steam from the boiler and on a multi cylinder engine we selected the first event by manually opening the appropriate valve after charging the receiver between the cylinders. Inertia starters where you spun a flywheel to store energy and then used a clutch to transfer it to the engine were the answer on big Caterpillar engines, they drove them with an auxiliary engine, on Messerchmitt 109's it was hand driven with a starting handle. If you watch archive film carefully you'll see the two mechanics needed for the process hand the starting handle to the pilot once the engine started. Is the big gear for the turning motion and the drive to the shaft direct?

[Invernahaille]

Normal Practice when stating up. The jackets have been warmed up for a few hours to get them up to temp with steam from the boiler. 2nd Engineer on the wickets (Starter Controls). Aux engineer checking temps etc. Junior engineer on the tops or cocks. There are valves on each cylinder head. When the second engineer pulls the lever to allow air into the required cylinder the junior checks to make sure there is no water or oil in the discharge, he runs down closing all the cocks and when he has checked and closed he indicates to the Second Engineer to put on the revs. This is done really slowly 10-20 Rpm gradually picking up speed in conjunction with telegraph commands

[Stanley]

Nice to know you still had a boiler Robert! We always left warming steam from a by-pass round the stop valve whispering into the HP cylinder overnight, this spread through the system and kept both cylinders warm overnight and also the engine house. Our weak point, apart from condensation was that if the beds were cold they shrank during the night and there was the possibility of a crack starting. For this reason the only holding down bolts that were dead tight were the two in front of each cylinder, the others were allowed to 'breathe'.
Victoria at Earby had a different problem. The shafting at the mill was very extensive and on a cold night the lubricant in the thousands of bearings got sticky and so they always barred the engine over for half an hour before starting unless it was very warm weather. If they hadn't done this the danger was knocking the HP crank pin off when steam was put on.

[Invernahaille]

Stanley,
There are many similarities between Marine Oil and Steam Engines.
The Boiler on board was used to create steam for the Donkey pumps to feed the boilers and steam was used for the calorifiers purifiers and off course the proverbial ships horn.
I need to find time to write and explain ships systems in more detail. I will try and do that over the weekend. Its really interesting stuff. Then again I am bound to say that.

[Stanley]

You're only telling the truth! Of course it's interesting to some of us....

[Thomo]

Much of my seagoing career was spent on steam powered vessels, and my longest draft was to HMS Blake, C99, A Helicopter Command Cruiser. I spent 30 months on Blake during which I worked with every piece of machinery on board. The main propulsion was split into two units, the forward unit and after unit, my part of ship was with the latter. Each unit comprised of a boiler room and an engine room, each also had a remote control room (slit trench). The two boiler rooms each had a pair of Admiralty 3 drum water tube boilers each producing 400 psi of superheated steam. Both engine rooms contained a pair of Parsons 4 shaft turbines with condensers, each engine had 3 turbines:- main, cruising and astern with each engine producing 20,000 shaft horsepower, a total of 80,000 shp giving a maximum top speed of 31.5 knots. At full speed each boiler consumed 4 tons of furnace fuel oil, FFO per hour. There were also a consummate number of auxiliary units, turbo blowers for supplying air to the boilers, and generating plants for the ships electrical power supply. then there were the boiler feed water heaters and fuel feed heaters, FFO has the initial consistency of cold porridge, there were also the evaporators, desalination plants for producing pure water for the boiler feed systems, and domestic water after the addition of bacteria, these latter units used the exhaust steam from the blowers and generators, the bilge pumps were also powered by this. Other units powered in a similar manner were the lube oil separators and the main steering gear pumps and air compressors, winches and windlasses. There were also two emergency generating plants, one under the control of the forward unit and one, the after unit. As at one time as a "Special Sea Dutyman" this last was my part of ship when required. "Papa" diesel was a large Davey Paxman RPH, and yes it was started by air. When called to duty I would enter the compartment, seal myself in and then inform control that I was "Closed up" and awaiting orders, the next step was preparation, ensure that the fuel header tank was full (topped up every hour by hand pump) when running, open the fuel supply valves and hand pump the engine oil to the bearings. When the order came to start I would open the air supply valve and when the pressure reached 400 psi, pull the start lever. The spent air from the starter exited via the engine exhaust system the outlet of which was safely above the ships waterline and on the port side. The noise of the starter was quite loud even in the compartment, where the exhaust exited the ship, it was colossal. In 1973 we were moored alongside at Portsmouth during "Navy Days" and the ship was open to visitors, at 4 in the afternoon as part of the ships normal routine I was called to my place of duty, there was a long queue of visitors along the South Railway Jetty aft of the main entry point to the ship. Happy smiling faces on a sunny day, Mums and Dads with Children, all decked out in their summer best. That I was blissfully unaware of this when closed up did not matter, and when ordered to start Papa diesel, I did just that. The exhaust was just below the level of the jetty, I did not see what happened there but I can fully appreciate the effect it must have had. The sudden noise would have been bad enough, but add to that the initial blast of unburnt fuel and any loose material in the exhaust, it must have been dreadful. It was talked about for many days, mainly about the effect on the poor women wearing skirts, Marylin Monroe magnified.

[Stanley]

Watching the reports of the S Korean ferry sinking. Apart from the human tragedy (it looks like about 300 dead) how can a modern vessel stray off course and hit a rock? The answer will almost certainly be the human element and there isn't any instrumentation to counter that yet! What struck me of course was Kaisho, bult by Daiwoo and reputed to be the largest floating crane in the world. Designed for a nominal lift of 4,500 tons but no doubt capable of more in an emergency.

[Stanley]

I can remember the first time I watched 'Mammoth' the big floating crane at Liverpool docks lifting a locomotive from Beyer-Garratt onto a Bell Lines ship at Liverpool. They specialised in carrying large loads like this on the deck. Looking at today's cranes, we have come a long way since then!