The only specialised marine publication in Oceania that focuses on the maritime industry, from super yachts to small craft to large commercial ships, including coastal shipping, tugs, tow boats, barges, ferries, tourist, sport-fishing craft, je
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Les Glass, stoker/engineer, with fire in the hole making for a good head of steam Gordon Thumath "oiler" at 84 applies a constant loving oil can to the engines Cooling at 10 tonne a load is a day's event to load 40 tonne and turn the ship, to bunker the port side room to a pair of triple expansion engines of the classic marine design which became popular in the 1880s. They are fairly large, in fact they are believed to be the largest triple expansion engines still operating in the southern hemisphere, with the engines delivering 980 IHP directly coupled to an 11 feet 9 inches diameter bronze propeller, each weighing 3.4 tons respectively. The cylinder diameters are 15 inches, 25 inches and 40 inches respectively, with a stroke of 30 inches The high-pressure cylinder is fitted with a piston valve having Moss Philip rings, while the intermediate-pressure and low-pressure valves are the Andrews and Cameron type. The piston rings are the Lockwood and Carlisle type, and metallic packing is fitted to all the piston and valve rods. By the time the steam reaches the low pressure cylinders it is near atmospheric pressure and it then exhausts into a large surface condenser arranged athwartships at the after end of the engine-room. Duplicated air pumps remove air from the condenser and pump the condensate forward to duplicated feed pumps, to be returned to the boilers. Check valves on each boiler are adjusted to keep the water level the same in the two boilers. While the engines can be reversed by hand, they are fitted with a steam reverser and will reverse very quickly during operation and in an emergency. There will normally be three engineers on the lower plates in the engine room: one at the controls of each engine and one 8 NZ WORKBOAT REVIEW 2013 oiling, checking water levels and so forth. All the auxiliaries in the engine room are steam, and all were duplicated or have alternative means to cover redundancies.This was to comply with a Lloyds stipulation as a requirement for insurance, due to the long delivery voyage to New Zealand. There is a diesel emergency fire pump hidden away in the lower fo'c'sle. So, in addition to the engine room pumps already mentioned, you will also find the seawater circulating pump, a bilge pump, a general service pump which can supply the condenser should the circulating pump fail, a freshwater pump and a generator for the electric power used on board, which are all powered by steam. The original generator was replaced in 1956 with a more powerful 15Kw unit salvaged from the minesweeper HMNZS Kiwi (T102), a Bird class minesweeper of the Royal New Zealand Navy. She was commissioned in 1941 for minesweeping and anti-submarine roles. From 1948 to 1956 she functioned as a training ship. With her sister ship Moa, Kiwi rammed and neutralised the Japanese submarine L1 at Iron Bottom Sound in Guadalcanal. Kiwi was the first of three ships with this name to serve in the Royal New Zealand Navy. Up top on the main deck level there is even more: a 'Donkin's Patent' steering engine drives the rudder steering gear. There are two steam winches on deck, a horizontal capstan forward and the larger twin warping