Welcome to the
Clyde Turbine Steamer Foundation Website
Dedicated to preserving the memory of the steam turbine powered
excursion ships which served on the Firth of Clyde in Scotland and supporting
anybody who takes on the care, maintenance and operation of the world's last
surviving turbine excursion steamer, "Queen Mary".
From 1901 with the introduction of the steamer King Edward, the world's
first commercial turbine-powered vessel, to the withdrawal of Queen Mary in
1977, the Firth of Clyde was the "home" of the excursion turbine steamer -
a form of propulsion which, although popular for naval vessels, ocean liners
and short-sea ferries,
never really caught on for excursion ships elsewhere.
These sleek, fast and smooth
steamers, illustrated by TS Duchess of Hamilton at Inveraray in 1968 in a photograph
by Ian Stewart, became the pride of the fleet and were employed on the main cruise
routes to the outer reaches of the Clyde.
In this website we also review other turbine passenger excursion steamers
and keep track of the last surviving passenger ships of any class which were
powered by the steam turbine
ABOUT THE CLYDE TURBINE STEAMER FOUNDATION
The Clyde Steamer Foundation was established in 2009 to
be a front for an attempt to purchase TS Queen Mary when she came up for
sale and it became clear that she would not be continuing in her role in London.
Fearing that she may be sold to shipbreakers, finance was found which would
have enabled Queen Mary to have been purchased and moved to a suitable location
for a suitable long term use. The preferred location and use would have been
a floating maritime museum in the Glasgow area, preferably attached to an existing
museum operation. Its attempts to attract interested parties failed and the
Foundation was not in a position to own or manage her in its own right. The
sale to the current French owner went through in the meantime and the project
was abandoned.
The Foundation has, therefore, no formal constitution,
other than being a banner through which to attract people interested in Queen
Mary and, amongst them, hope to find enough people with enough skills, dedication
and money to be able to put a contingency plan in place to save Queen Mary if
she ever became at risk again. In
the meantime it will attempt to promote Queen Mary in her forthcoming role as
a hotel ship in La Rochelle, France, primarily through this website and do what
it can to ensure that her owners respect her traditional lines and promote her
as the important historical vessel that she undoubtedly is.
This website
aims to be a source of information about Clyde turbine steamers in general,
with due consideration given to the application of the turbine to passenger
excursion vessels in other parts of the United Kingdom. It also aims to become
the main source of information and photographs about TS Queen Mary on the internet.
Brief information is given on other surviving turbine-powered passenger ships
in the world, now that they have almost totally disappeared from the shipping
register. For example, only two steam turbine-powered ocean liners now sail
in commercial service, with only one expected to survive beyond 2010 and the
introduction of new safety regulations for passenger ships at sea.
The last Clyde turbine steamer and the last
of its class in the world
TS Queen Mary
Queen
Mary left her London berth under tow on Monday 9th November 2009
initially for Tilbury before onward transportation to a new life
in La Rochelle
The
photo left shows Queen Mary passing under Tower Bridge in central
London in a photo kindly supplied by John May
THE TURBINE PRINCIPLE
The turbine principle, whilst understood for many hundreds of years, had
not
been applied in any practical use in the Industrial Revolution until Charles
Parsons experimented with it for power generation purposes in the 1890s. The
fore-sighted engineer appreciated that it might be used for propulsion in a
marine environment and built a demonstration ship, the steam yacht "Turbinia"
in 1894. Turbinia achieved unexpectedly high speeds and got the perfect
opportunity to show its paces at the Naval Review off Spithead in 1897. In
front of all the leading admirals of the Royal Navy she outpaced all other
vessels on display. It was not long before the Admiralty and Parsons, having
formed the Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company, signed a contract for a new
vessel for the Navy, a 210 foot long torpedo boat which was delivered in late
1899 and caused great satisfaction when she achieved over 37 knots on
trial.
News of this reached the famous Clyde shipbuilders, William Denny
& Co who were interested in developing a turbine powered merchant ship.
The naval torpedo boat "Viper" was similar in size to a large Clyde Steamer
and it seemed sensible to use the local excursion fleet as a test-bed. None
of the main established operators were prepared to jointly finance a
demonstration vessel with Parsons, only Captain John Williamson, an
independent operator took the risk and the Turbine Steamers Syndicate was
then established for this purpose.
37 knots far exceeded the pace of
all other Clyde Steamers : 17 knots was pretty close to the maximum speed
that existing vessels could achieve. There was considerable scope for a
vessel with extra speed to undertake the long runs to Campbeltown and
Inveraray and whilst 37 knots would have made the new vessel untouchable, it
was accepted that, to keep the new ship within reasonable capital cost,
expectations would be more modest.
King Edward of 1901, the first Clyde
Steamer of the new century, was launched on May 16th 1901 at Dumbarton and on
trial achieved 18.66 knots and then during a second set of trials on June
24th, achieved a mean speed of 19.7 knots over the Skelmorlie measured mile.
This was still a slight disappointment to the ship's sponsors and she was
sent to the yard of A&J Inglis at Pointhouse, Glasgow for larger
propellers to be fitted. During a further trial on the 28th of June, King
Edward achieved 20.5 knots and was declared ready for public
service.
The turbine principle differed from the established method of
propulsion in that it exploited a rotary action rather than a reciprocating
action to turn the work of heat and expanding steam into propulsive power.
The engine was rather simpler and definitely more compact than a
reciprocating engine. Gone were the large pistons, connecting rods,
eccentrics and valves. No longer was there the "dead" effort of the return
stroke of the piston. No longer did steam have to be piped into a second
cylinder to make second use of its residual expansion possibilities. In the
turbine, steam passed through a number of rotary blades attached to a central
shaft running the length of the cylinder. The force of the passing steam
caused the blades to rotate and the shaft to turn. As the steam expanded it
could pass through numerous sets of blades, extracting "work" from the steam
at each stage. It was reported that steam went through five stages
of expansion in King Edward's High pressure turbine and a further 25 times
in each of the two Low Pressure turbines into which the steam was exhausted
in turbine equivalent of "compounding". Therefore the engines offered
greater mechanical and thermal efficiency than traditional engines and
saved valuable space aboard ship. Not so exciting to look at maybe, but quiet
in operation and totally without the pronounced fore-and-aft surging which was
noticeable on compund diagonal, but particularly single diagonal paddle steamer
engines.
The turbine method was not suitable
for driving a paddle shaft, so turbine steamers were always screw propelled.
In the case of King Edward, three propeller shafts were used, one from each
turbine, although it was possible for turbines to be arranged in "tandem"
where the work of one of more cylinders was exerted on a common propeller
shaft. Unlike reciprocating engines which generally turned the paddle wheel
crank at between 40 and 50 revolutions per minute, turbines produced a high
speed rotary motion. King Edward's central propeller, powered by the High
Pressure turbine turned at 700 RPM and the outer two at 1000 RPM. In many
turbine steamers, a gearing mechanism was built into the turbines to reduce
the speed as this was found to be more suitable for efficient propeller
operation.
TURBINE POWER AND ITS
APPLICATION IN BRITISH COASTAL EXCURSION VESSELS
Three Clyde Turbine Steamers :
Duchess of Montrose,
Queen Mary II and Duchess of Hamilton await another season
at their winter lay-up berth at Greenock in the early 1960s. The
Clyde was the "home" of turbine excursion vessels.
Why did they become so popular here, but not elsewhere, even though
turbines found wide application in larger steamships? What was the
experience with them elsewhere in the UK?
OTHER STEAM TURBINE COASTAL
EXCURSION STEAMERS AND OPERATORS IN THE U.K.
Away from the Clyde, only three operators
ordered turbine steamers and with the exception of the Liverpool and North Wales
trade where two large vessels had a reasonable degree of success, the sole vessels
bought by Paddle Steamer operators P&A Campbell and the General Steam Navigation
Company were notable failures. Follow
the links below for brief summaries of these companies operations and their
excursion ship fleets. Paddle and other vessels are included in the lists to
put the turbine steamers in their fleet contexts. For details of these paddle
steamers, please go to the Paddle
Steamer Resources by Tramscape website.
Steam
turbines were adopted quickly for larger vessels : short sea crossings such
as from the south of England to northern France and from the north-west to the
Isle of Man and Ireland as well as for ocean liners and military vessels. These
vessels are out of scope for this website.
SS Oceanic : likely to be the last turbine
ocean liner in steam, sailing for the Japanese Peace Boat organisation
- and not a commercial cruise company.
Clyde
River Steamer Club : Glasgow-based
enthusiasts' club. Monthly meetings with illustrated talks. Periodic members'
hospitality cruises on the Clyde. Covers the whole range of Clyde services and
ships from the paddle steamers through the turbines to the modern motor-powered
car ferries,
FOR MORE ABOUT CLYDE STEAMERS IN GENERAL AND
PADDLE STEAMERS PAST AND PRESENT ......
The full story
of the Clyde Steamers is described on the Paddle
Steamer Resources by Tramscape website, the internet's leading information source
about paddle steamers past and present. This website is
associated with the Foundation for Paddle Steamers Worldwide, an organisation
promoting the world's remaining paddle steamers to ensure their long
term operational survival.
Left:
Paddle Steamer Jeanie Deans, on the Clyde from 1931 to 1964, and
featuring in the Historical Database section of the Paddle
Steamer Resources by Tramscape website. Photo
by Alexander Bain (courtesy of Donald Bain)
CAN YOU HELP WITH THIS DATABASE ?
The webmaster would be delighted to receive any updates of relevant information
and photographs (of which you own copyright) which could help to keep this database
as up-to-date as possible and fill in gaps in the historical record.
I
know that many of you will have photographs of turbine steamers on the internet
on photo-sharing websites such as Picasa and Flickr. No photos are used on this
website unless they were taken by the webmaster or someone who has given express
permission for their own photos to be used. However, some photos from Flickr
etc may be used so long a the copyright tag (Creative Commons etc) allocated
to the photo at the time of downloading allows.
Tramscape is trying to develop
this website as the main source on the internet for turbine steamer information
and photos, so the webmaster would be very grateful if you would allow use of
your photos in this database so they can be seen by the wider community who will be reading this website.
Please
e-mail the Webmaster with your
information and photos or general authorisation to use photos from another website
source. Thank you very much
E-Mail contact address for the webmaster
: turbinesteamers at ntlworld dot com
COPYRIGHT AND REUSE ISSUES OF PHOTOGRAPHS AND
TEXT ON THIS WEBSITE
Tramscape and
Gordon Stewart. All photographs displayed are with the permission of the acknowledged photographer
but are not to be copied for re-use for any other website or publication without
the specific authorisation of the photographer. You are welcome to use the text
from this website as a research source and basis for your own work but it should
not be copied and republished elsewhere verbatim or only slightly altered. All
material on these websites : tramways.awardspace.com, paddlesteamers.awardspace.com,
steamships.awardspace.com, turbinesteamers.awardspace.com, paddlesteamers.freehostia.com
and turbinesteamers.freehostia.com are
Tramscape and Gordon Stewart or the individual photographer where acknowledged.
Photos not otherwised attributed are by Gordon Stewart
Information
presented is from the webmaster's own research or from material submitted to
the webmaster for publication. If anything posted is factually incorrect and
you are in possession of more accurate information, please let me know and I
will make the appropriate corrections / improvements to the text.
Tramscape and
Gordon Stewart.