Part 10 (2/2)
”Starboard and port high pressure cylinders with valve chest; upper exhaust outlet f.l.a.n.g.e broken off. (Cannot be repaired.)”
”Starboard and port second intermediate valve chest; steam inlet f.l.a.n.g.e broken off, (Cannot be repaired.)”
”First intermediate pressure starboard exhaust pipes of exhaust line to second intermediate pressure f.l.a.n.g.e broken off. (Cannot be repaired.)”
”Starboard and port low pressure exhaust pipe damaged. (Cannot be repaired.)”
Naval officers are pleased to recall that every single one of these supposedly irreparable injuries was not only repaired, but speedily repaired. Patching and welding were the answer to the problem they presented. Both these valuable methods had never been employed in marine engineering, although they had been used by the railroads for some fifteen years. There are three methods; or, rather, three methods were employed: electric welding, oxyacetylene welding, and ordinary mechanical patching. After repairs were effected tests of the machinery were first made at the docks with the s.h.i.+ps lashed to the piers, the propellers being driven at low speed. Later each vessel was taken to sea for vigorous trial tests, and everything was found to be perfectly satisfactory. Indeed, it has been a.s.serted that several knots were added to the best speed that the _Vaterland_--renamed _Leviathan_--ever made.
Of course the crew of the _Vaterland_ had spared no pains in fixing that great s.h.i.+p so that she could not be used; even so they had less to do than the engine forces of other craft, for the reason that the vessel was in extremely bad repair as she was. As a consequence, she was one of the German s.h.i.+ps that were least mutilated. When repairs were completed and it was time for her trial trip, her commander, a young American naval officer, was ordered to test the big craft in every way, to utilize every pound of steam pressure, and to try her out to the limit.
For, if there was anything wrong with the vessel, the navy wished to know it before she fared forth with troops on board.
The _Leviathan_ stood the test. And to-day we all know what a great part she has played in carrying our soldiers to France. She is in fact, a far better boat than on her maiden trip, for our engineers were surprised to find how sloppily she had been built in certain respects.
In preparing her for sea the engineers found it necessary to overhaul, partially redesign and reconstruct many important parts of the _Leviathan's_ engines. As in her case, the most serious typical damage was done by breaking the cylinders, valve-chests, circulating pumps, steam and exhaust units in main engines; dry-firing boilers, and thus melting the tubes and distorting furnaces, together with easily detectable instances of a minor character, such as cutting piston and connecting rods and stays with hack saws, smas.h.i.+ng engine-room telegraph systems, and removing and destroying parts which the Germans believed could not be duplicated. Then there was sabotage well concealed: rod stays in boilers were broken off, but nuts were fastened on exposed surfaces for purposes of deception; threads of bolts were destroyed, the bolts being replaced with but one or two threads to hold them, and thus calculated to give way under pressure. Piles of shavings and inflammable material with cans of kerosene near suggested the intention to burn the vessels, intentions thwarted by our watchfulness, while the absence of explosives has been accounted for purely on the ground of the risk which the crews would have run in attempting to purchase explosive materials in the open market.
No great amount of damage was done to the furnis.h.i.+ngs or ordinary s.h.i.+p's fittings. Destructiveness was similar in character throughout all the vessels and involved only important parts of the propulsive mechanism or other operating machinery.
We have spoken of the investigation of the vessels by s.h.i.+pping Board engineers. They were appointed by the board not only to make a survey, but to superintend repairs. The collector of the port of New York also named a board of engineers (railroad engineers) to investigate the damage done the German s.h.i.+ps, and to recommend repairs through the agency of welding. The railroad men, after due study, believed that their art could be applied to as great advantage on s.h.i.+ps as upon locomotives. The s.h.i.+pping Board engineers recommended, on the other hand, the renewal of all badly damaged cylinders. The railroad engineers, on the other hand, set forth their opinion that all damaged cylinders could be reclaimed and made as good as new.
As a result of this difference of opinion, nothing was done until the larger German craft were turned over to the Navy Department to be fitted as transports, in July of 1917. It was then decided to use welding and patching on the vessels.
In no cases were the repairs to the propulsive machinery delayed beyond the time necessary to equip these s.h.i.+ps as transports. Electric and acetylene welding is not a complicated art in the hands of skilled men; for patching a hole, or filling the cavity of a great crack in a cylinder, say by electric welding, may be compared to a similar operation in dental surgery.
Returning to the _Leviathan's_ faulty German construction, be it said that the opinion of the navy engineers who overhauled her, was that inferior engineering had been practised in her construction. There are on this craft four turbine engines ahead, and four astern, on four shafts. All the head engines were in good shape, but all the astern engines were damaged. But the main part of the damage had resulted more to faulty operation of the engines than to malicious damage. Cracks were found in the casing of the starboard high-pressure backing turbine, cracks of size so great as to make it certain that this engine had not been used in the last run of that vessel on transatlantic service in 1914. There was discovered on the _Vaterland_, or _Leviathan_, doc.u.mentary evidence to prove this, and it also appeared from this paper that on her last trip to this country the vessel had not averaged twenty knots. It may be that the German s.h.i.+p-builders had hurried too swiftly in their strenuous efforts to produce a bigger, if not a better, steams.h.i.+p than the British could turn out.
Forty-six of the _Vaterland's_ boilers showed evidence of poor handling.
They were not fitted with the proper sort of internal feed-pipes. All these defects, defects original with the steams.h.i.+p, were repaired by the Americans. In addition, evidences of minor attempts to disable the _Vaterland_ were found, such, for instance, as holes bored in sections of suction-pipes, the holes having been puttied and thus concealed.
Things of the sort afforded ample reason for a thorough overhaul of the vast ma.s.s of machinery aboard the steams.h.i.+p. But eventually she was ready for her test and her performance on a trial trip to southern waters showed how skilful had been the remedial measures applied.
Aboard the _Leviathan_ as other big German liners, such as the _Amerika_, _President Grant_, _President Lincoln_, (recently sunk by a German torpedo while bound for this country from France), the _George Was.h.i.+ngton_, and other vessels fitted as troop and hospital s.h.i.+ps, and the like, naval crews were placed, and naval officers, of course, in command. They have proved their mettle, all. They have shown, further, that when we get ready to take our place, after the war, among the nations that go in heavily for things maritime, we shall not be among the last, either in point of resourcefulness or intrepidity.
Civilian sailormen who have sailed on vessels commanded by naval officers have been inclined to smile over the minutia of navy discipline and have expressed doubt whether the naval men would find a certain rigidity any more useful in a given situation than the civilian seamen would find a looser ordered system. We can but base judgment on facts, and among the facts that have come under the writer's observation, was the difficulty which the German officers of the _Vaterland_ encountered in taking their vessel into her dock in the North River. The very last time they attempted it the great hulk got crosswise in the current in the middle of the stream, and caused all sorts of trouble.
Our naval officers, however, made no difficulty at all in snapping the steams.h.i.+p into her pier. She steams up the Hudson on the New York side, makes a big turn, and lo! she is safely alongside her pier. Any seafaring man will tell you that this implies seamanly ability.
Following is a list of the larger German s.h.i.+ps which were repaired by the navy engineers, with the names under which they now sail:
FORMER NAME PRESENT NAME _Amerika_.................._America_.
_Andromeda_................_Bath_.
_Barbarossa_..............._Mercury_.
_Breslau_.................._Bridgeport_.
_Cincinnati_..............._Covington_[1] (sunk).
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