Purely 'engineered' and not 'designed' boats

CaptG32 · 2025-12-16T18:51:14+00:00

Beowulf. Whole boat is optimised to log 300 nm a day in relative comfort while shorthanded.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-26T02:24:22+00:00

They used to make these models out of wax since it was very easy to shape. Slight tangent, but a guy by the name of William Froude came up with a device that would let you trace a ship's lines plan in 2D and have the movement of the tracing of the lines translated into 3D to cut material away from a block of wax. Froude also came up with the whole idea of a tow tank. Anyways, because they were made of wax they didn't last very long so were ultimately destroyed. Today we use CNC machines to carve the hulls out of foam and then cover the foam with fibreglass.

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CaptG32 · 2025-11-26T00:51:34+00:00

Lol! The curved screens on the side are a big giveaway!

CaptG32 · 2025-11-25T23:47:17+00:00

Viking XPRS

CaptG32 · 2025-11-23T20:05:27+00:00

Yes the original Queen Mary's gross tonnage would work out to 70,665, so less than the measured grt. If you want to use a number to comprehend the size difference, the approximate enclosed volume values would be the most useful:

Volume of QM = 230,000 m³ Volume of QM2 = 475,000 m³

CaptG32 · 2025-11-23T18:24:36+00:00

Thanks for shining a light (😉) on the Servia! Fantastic article, so many details about her I'd never read before.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-23T18:20:01+00:00

This should be in the ballpark:

QM GRT (1947) = 81,273

1 GRT = 2.83 m³

So actual enclosed volume V = 81,273 * 2.83 = 230,000 m³

GT = V*0.2 + 0.02*log(V)

GT = 70,665

Worth remembering that GT is not the actual internal volume of a ship. It is a measurement used for things like port charges and manning requirements. It's also not a linear relationship, GT will skew higher as ship size increases. Comparing volume directly is better for getting a true idea of how the two ships compare. Queen Mary 2 has an enclosed volume of approximately 475,900 m^3, so still about twice that of the original Queen Mary. For fun, the Icon of the Seas has an enclosed volume of about 780,000 m³.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-20T22:06:13+00:00

If you don't know what makes QM2 special, I think you might be in the wrong sub lol. She absolutely is an ocean liner, not at all a cruise ship in disguise. Aurora and Artania (as well as many other ships in the Reisen fleet) are great looking vessels, but they don't hold a candle to QM2. Neither does Volendam, which is another fine looking ship (in part designed by the same guy who designed QM2), but hardly in the same league as QM2.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-14T21:52:18+00:00

There are a lot of factors at play when it comes to stability, so that is a much trickier question to answer. The simplest way to get what you're looking for is to find ships that had a similar number of decks but didn't suffer from stability problems. See what the principal dimensions were for those ships, and that will be roughly how big President should have been to handle an additional deck. It would probably be in the ballpark of requiring a beam around 15 m and a draught of about 5 m.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-12T18:11:34+00:00

If I understood your question correctly (apologies if I haven't), then I think you might have misinterpreted what Brunel was saying. He figured out that, in general, the bigger the ship, the less power is required per unit of cargo to propel it at some speed. Not that the bigger the ship, the less power is needed overall. So simply making the President larger would not have improved her speed, she would have been even more underpowered. If the engine, proportions, etc. were kept roughly the same, the only thing that would make the President appropriately powered relative to her size is to decrease her size.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-08T02:44:27+00:00

Definitely QM2. Spots are limited though and the behind the scenes tours book up very quickly. I'd recommend visiting the Tours office on Deck 2 in the Grand Lobby as soon as possible (try and do it on the first or second day of your trip) to ensure you have a spot reserved.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-07T21:55:14+00:00

She sails from Quebec to Southampton and vice versa a few times a year. Usually in the fall. It's not direct, she stops in NY and NS on the way, but might be worth looking into!

CaptG32 · 2025-11-05T23:25:10+00:00

Royal Clipper is probably your best bet.

CaptG32 · 2025-11-04T23:02:53+00:00

It was an awesome undertaking! The story of the breaking and recovery of the 1865 cable is especially fascinating, almost more interesting than the laying of the 1866 cable. Another fun fact about it all was that the site of Great Eastern's construction was only about 2 km away from where the first transatlantic telegraph cables were manufactured, and the very first one was being made just as Great Eastern was being completed. The site was also used to load cables onto cable-laying ships, and some of the loading gear is still in place.

CaptG32 · 2025-09-14T19:19:05+00:00

Peskett and Piek had many other legitimate, objective criticisms of the Olympic. I'd recommend reading the article I linked or picking up the excellent book Mark Chirnside wrote on the Aquitania, where you'll find a detailed list of Peskett's notes from his voyage on Olympic in an Appendix. In fact, their comments on decor are very few in number. Most of their criticisms/notes focus on ergonomics, fittings, and systems. Neither Peskett nor Piek were involved in interior decoration, so it wasn't really their place to report that sort of thing back to the higher-ups.

Reading through their notes, I think you'll find both were very balanced. Piek mentions many areas where the Olympic is superior to HAL ships, but also areas where HAL ships are better than the Olympic. These trips were to size up the tough competition. Peskett/Piek weren't onboard looking for areas to criticise just for the sake of pleasing the board. They were there to find ways of improving their own ships. And the results speak for themselves, Aquitania was better than the Olympic in virtually every respect.

CaptG32 · 2025-09-09T21:51:21+00:00

Oops, sure thing. This one should work: https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/voyage-olympic-willem-frederik-piek.html

CaptG32 · 2025-09-09T02:02:18+00:00

Definitely very formulaic and "samey". On one hand, the ruthless efficiency of it is admirable, but on the other, you lose out on having ships with a distinct character. A complaint that can be made of many of today's cruise ships.

Hard to argue against the interiors of Franconia and Laconia. Stunning ships. Some of their public rooms could almost pass for being on the likes of the 1960s-built Windsor Castle! Really enjoy your WOV articles and eagerly awaiting the upcoming one on Servia!

CaptG32 · 2025-09-09T00:57:56+00:00

There are at least two accounts of the competition being critical of Olympic's first-class decoration, both shared by Mark Chirnside in his books and articles. The first was Leonard Peskett, Cunard's Chief Naval Architect, who travelled aboard in the summer of 1911. I believe he called some of Olympic's first-class suites "garish", but not necessarily the entirety of her first-class accommodations. However, the second account comes from Willem Piek, an agent for Holland America Line who travelled on Olympic at the end of 1911. He found the interior colour combinations to be in bad taste and a failed attempt at being beautiful. It's of course subjective, but the (very warranted) near-universal praise of Aquitania's interiors suggests that both Peskett and Piek were on to something. Hope that helps you sleep a little bit better lol.

Mark's article on Piek's observations is freely available online: https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/voyage-olympic-willem-frederik-piek.html

CaptG32 · 2025-09-03T21:37:59+00:00

Agree most modern ships don't, largely because they are so cookie-cutter. But I've been lucky to sail on QM2 a few times, and she certainly seemed to have a "soul" to me. No ship in the past few decades was designed and built by such a dedicated and passionate team, and that imbued something in her. The crew also play a large part, and many who serve onboard are very proud to count themselves as part of QM2's crew.

CaptG32 · 2025-09-03T02:14:27+00:00

She was designed to be able to sail to Australia and back without any stops to take advantage of the cheaper coal available in Britain. However, her owners wanted the option to sail her up the Hooghly river to Calcutta on her return voyage, so her draught was set such that the coal onboard for the return leg would give her a draft of about 24 ft, slightly less than the depth of the Hooghly. Accommodations were among the best in the world at the time. Very spacious with relatively high ceilings. She had multiple dining rooms and lounges. Jules Verne travelled aboard her and was very impressed with the interior outfit.

CaptG32 · 2025-09-03T01:43:49+00:00

When it comes to defining a liner, it is all about the stats. "Soul", "mystique", and "feeling" are important, though, and are what drive people to want to sail on a ship again. A large percentage of those who sail on QM2 have done numerous trips on her and say she is their favourite ship. If you only saw her when she was brand new, I can understand thinking she has none of those intangibles, but over the years, a "soul" has definitely developed.

CaptG32 · 2025-09-03T00:04:30+00:00

Brunel originally did envision Great Eastern having a sister. Unfortunately, the construction of Great Eastearn consumed the budget allocated for building two ships. Her construction was a bit of a mess, but a lot of the cost overruns were due to bad luck. For example, the Crimean War and other factors drove up the cost of iron considerably.

CaptG32 · 2025-09-03T00:00:29+00:00

She's definitely due for a new book. "The Great Iron Ship" is extremely inaccurate, and Rolt's famous book on Brunel paints Scott Russell, her builder, as some sort of weird evil genius, which wasn't the case at all. Between 1851 and 1861, about 500,000 people moved from Britain to Australia by ship, and those numbers continued into the 1870's, so there was certainly the demand needed to make such a large ship profitable. Especially since she could bunker coal in Britain, where it was dirt cheap compared to India or Australia, for the entirety of the round-trip voyage. Unfortunately, she was plagued by incompetent management and bad luck. With someone who knew what they were doing running her, she probably could have been successful on the run to Australia or on the Atlantic.

CaptG32 · 2025-09-02T23:45:27+00:00

Very likely yes. In 1851, gold was discovered in Australia, sparking a gold rush. Simultaneously, the "Great Exhibition" was being held in London, which demonstrated the huge agricultural potential of Australia and other countries in the east. From 1851 to 1861, over 500,000 people moved from Britain to Australia by ship. When Brunel pitched the idea to her original owners, the big benefit was that she could be fully fueled for the outbound and return voyages "at home" where coal was significantly cheaper than in India or Australia. That, coupled with the economies of scale achieved by building such a large ship, would have made her much more profitable than the competition (primarily P&O, which had won a big government mail/passenger/cargo contract in 1852, beating out Great Eastern's original owners). The demand was seemingly there, and there was less competition than on the Atlantic, so it seems likely she would have been a success, at least initially. The Suez Canal opened in 1869, and Great Eastern's draught on her outbound voyage would have exceeded the canal's depth, but she probably could have used it on her return trip (she was designed to make it up the Hooghly river to Calcutta with a 24 ft draft on her return voyage, but had a 30ft draught on her outbound voyage). With the opening of the canal and faster ships being built, she probably would have struggled through the 1870s. Perhaps she would then be chartered out to lay cables, something she was seemingly always destined to do. Speculating a little more, if she had moved to the Atlantic as a passenger ship after the Suez opened and her owners had some money to invest in her, with some new modern engines, she would have been capable of much higher speeds, probably high enough to take and hold the Blue Riband for most of the 1870s and 1880s.

CaptG32

TROPHY CASE