Abstract
THE winter session of the North-East Coast Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders was opened on October 21 by the delivery at Newcastlo-upon-Tyne of the presidential address by Mr. R. J. Walker, who since 1899 has been associated with the Parsons Steam Turbine Co., Ltd., of which after tho death of Sir Charles Parsons he became chairman and managing director. At the following meeting of the Institution, held on October 28, Engr. Vice-Admiral Sir R. W. Skelton, the Engineer-in-Chief of the Fleet, delivered tho first Andrew Laing lecture. Laing, who was born in Edinburgh on January 31, 1856, and died in Newcastle OH January 24, 1931, from 1877 until 1896 was connected with the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Co., Govan, and from 1896 until the time of his death was managing director of tho Wallsond Slipway and Engineering Co. His life's work was mainly connected with the design and construction of the machinery of Atlantic liners, his most famous ship being tho Mauretania, built in 1907, which for twenty-three years held tho ‘blue ribbon’ of tho Atlantic. The construction of this vessel and her ill-fated sister ship the Lusitania was due to circumstances somewhat akin to those existing to-day, when the fastest vessels in the mercantile marine are not registered as British vassels. The initial step was the formation of an Admiralty committee in 1902 which was directed to inquire into the principles on which subsidies were being given and to consider how and at what cost vessels could be secured which should combine great speed with a large radius of action. Tho outcome was an agreement between the Government and the Cunard Co. whereby the Government agreed to advance a sum of money at 2¾ per cent interest for the construction of two ships and to increase the annual subsidy. The bold step of adopting steam turbines for tho vessels was due to the report of a technical committee on which Laing served.
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Andrew Laing Memorial Lecture. Nature 130, 733 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130733a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130733a0