Chapter XII Notes on Oil and Oil Engines
How War and Peaceful Commerce Will Be Revolutionised by the Oil Engine
On September 17th, 1912, at 3 a.m., I invited two very eminent experts, Sir Trevor Dawson and his coadjutor McKechnie, to leave their beds and come into my room to see an outline of the Fast Ship of the Future, both for War and Commerce, carrying sufficient fuel to go round the Earth with and with an increased capacity of 30 per cent. as compared with similar vessels of the same displacement using steam. At length a special Government Research Department has been set up to develop the Oil Engine, and a sum prohibitive in peace time has been cheerfully accorded by War reasoning to set up this establishment on a big basis. I reiterate what is said elsewhere, that the Oil Engine will revolutionise both War and Commerce when once it is perfected—through the enormous gain it affords in space and smaller crews through riddance of stokeholds and firemen, and facility of re-fuelling and cleanliness and absence of funnels, etc., etc.
Here is a descriptive outline of H.M.S. “Incomparable,” as set forth in the early morning of September 17th, 1912:
Really a Gem! She can be riddled and gutted outside the Central Diamond-shaped Armoured Citadel because nothing vital outside that Citadel! So lightly built she’ll weigh so little as to go Fast, with a hundred and fifty thousand horse power! She’ll shake to pieces in about 10 years! What’s the good of a warship lasting longer? The d—d things get obsolete in about a year!
Ten 16-inch guns to begin with (afterwards 20-inch guns) for main armament.
Eight broadside Torpedo Tubes (21-inch Torpedo).
32 knots speed at least.
16-inch armour on citadel and belt amidships, thinning towards the end.
850 feet long—to be afterwards 1,000 feet; 86 feet wide.
Four Torpedo Tubes each side to be well before the Citadel (submerged Tubes) so as not to interfere with machinery space.
Quadruple screws.
Anti-Submarine guns in small single turrets.
A Turtle-backed armoured hull, with light steel uninflammable structure before and abaft the armoured Diamond-shaped Citadel.
Two Conning Towers.
Hydraulic crane each side (very low in height) for lifting boats.
The light central steel hollow mast only for wireless and for ventilation, made of steel ribbon to wind up and down at will.
Jam up the Citadel all that is possible right in centre of Hull, and squeeze the last inch in space so as to lessen amount of 16-inch armour.
Curved thick armour deck.
Ammunition service by Hydraulic power.
Oil right fore and aft the whole ship. Enough to go round the earth!
Very high double bottom—honeycombed.
Coffer dams everywhere stuffed with cork.
This, then, is the Fast Battle Cruiser “Incomparable” of 32 knots speed and 20-inch guns and no funnels, and phenomenal light draught of water, because so very long and built so flimsy that she won’t last 10 years, but that’s long enough for the War!
I have just found copy of a letter I sent Mr. Winston Churchill dated two months later, when those two very eminent men, having cogitated over the matter, very kindly informed me that the Visionary was justified. I omit the details they kindly gave me, as I don’t wish to deprive them of any trade advantage in the furtherance of their great commercial intentions with regard to the oil engine, for it is just now the commercial aspect of the internal combustion engine which enthrals us. A ship now exists that has a dead weight capacity of 9,500 tons with a speed of eleven knots (which is quite fast enough for all cargo-carrying purposes) and she burns only a little over ten tons of oil an hour. Having worked out the matter, I conclude she would save roughly a thousand pounds in fuel alone over a similar sized steamship in a voyage of about 3,000 miles (say crossing the Atlantic); and, of course, as compared with coal, she could carry much additional cargo, probably about 600 tons more. Then the getting rid of boilers and coal bunkers gives another immense additional space to the oil engine ship for cargo, as the oil fuel would be carried in the double-bottom. A Swiss firm has put on board an ocean-going motor-driven ship a Diesel engine which develops 2,500 indicated Horse Power in one cylinder, so that a quadruple-screw motor ship could have 80,000 Horse Power with sixteen of these cylinders cranked on each shaft. I don’t see why one shouldn’t have a sextuple-screw motor ship with a hundred thousand Horse Power. So it is ludicrous to say that the internal combustion engine is not suited to big ships. For some reason I cannot discover, “Tramp” owners are hostile to the internal combustion engine. I hope they will not discover their error too late. I sent two marvellous pictures of a Motor Battleship to Mr. Winston Churchill on November 17th, 1912, saying to him:—
“These pictures will make your mouth water!”
However, this type of ship is obsolete for war before she has been begun, as we have got to turn her into a submersible—not that there is any difficulty in that—it has already been described that in August, 1916, a submersible vessel with a 12-inch gun was proposed and after extreme hesitation and long delays in construction was built, but she was completed too late to take part in the war. She might have sunk a goodly number of the German Fleet at the Battle of Jutland. But our motto in the war was “Too Late.”10
The whole pith and marrow of the Internal Combustion Engine lies in the science of metallurgy. We are lamentably behind every foreign nation, without exception, in our application of the Internal Combustion Engine to commercial purposes, because its reliability depends on Metallurgy, in which science we are wanting, and we are also wanting in scientific research on the scale of 12 inches to a foot. We have no scale at all!
We are going to be left behind!
The Board of Invention and Research, of which I was President, after much persistence obtained the loan of a small Laboratory at South Kensington, greatly aided by Professor Dalby, F.R.S., for research purposes as regards the Internal Combustion Engine; but its capabilities were quite inadequate. Then the President of the Council (Earl Curzon) was to undertake the whole question of Research on a great and worthy scale, and I got a most kind letter from him. It ended with the letter!
In this connection I have had wonderful support from Sir Marcus Samuel, who staked his all on Oil and the Oil Engine. Where should we have been in this War but for this Prime Mover? I’ve no doubt he is an oil millionaire now, but that’s not the point. Oil is one of the things that won us the War. And when he was Lord Mayor of London he was about the only man who publicly supported me when it was extremely unfashionable to do so.
Oil is the very soul of future Sea Fighting. Hence my interest in it, and though not intending to work again, yet my consuming passion for oil and the oil engine made me accept the Chairmanship of a Royal Commission on Oil and the Oil Engine when Mr. Churchill and Mr. Asquith found me at Naples in May, 1912.
I have come to the conclusion that about the best thing I ever did was the following exuberant outburst over Oil and the Oil Engine. I observe it was printed in November 1912, written “currente calamo,” and now on reading it over I would not alter a word. I am only aghast at the astounding stupidity of the British Shipbuilder and the British Engineer in being behind every country in the development of motor ships.
Oil and the Oil Engine (1912)
| I.— | With two similar Dreadnoughts oil gives 3 knots more speed—that is if ships are designed to burn oil only instead of oil and coal—and speed is everything. |
| II.— | The use of oil fuel increases the strength of the British Navy 33 per cent., because it can re-fuel at sea off the enemy’s Harbours. Coal necessitates about one-third of the Fleet being absent re-fuelling at a base (in case of war with Germany) some three or four hundred miles off!—i.e., some six or eight hundred miles unnecessary expenditure of fuel and wear and tear of machinery and men. |
| III.— | Oil for steam-raising reduces the present engine and boiler room personnel some 25 per cent., and for Internal Combustion Engines would perhaps reduce the personnel over 60 per cent. This powerfully affects both economy and discipline. |
| IV.— | Oil tankers are in profusion on every sea and as England commands the Ocean (she must command the Ocean to live!!) she has peripatetic re-fuelling stations on every sea and every oil tanker’s position known every day to a yard! Before very long there will be a million tons of oil on the various oceans in hundreds of oil tankers. The bulk of these would be at our disposal in time of war. Few or none could reach Germany. |
| V.— | The Internal Combustion Engine with one ton of oil does what it takes four tons of coal to do!11 And having no funnels or smoke is an indescribable fighting asset! (Always a chance of smoke in an oil steam-raising vessel where of course the funnels which disclose a ship such an immense distance off are obligatory. Each enemy’s ship spells her name to you by her funnels as they appear on the horizon, while you are unseen!) |
| VI.— | The armament of the Internal Combustion Ship is not hampered by funnels, so can give all-round fire, an inestimable advantage because the armament can all be placed in the central portion of the Hull with all-round fire, and giving the ship better seaworthy qualities by not having great weights in the extremities, as obligatory where you have funnels and boilers. |
| VII.— | But please imagine the blow to British prestige if a German warship with Internal Combustion Propulsion is at sea before us and capable of going round the World without re-fuelling! What an Alabama!!! What an upset to the tremblers on the brink who are hesitating to make the plunge for Motor Battleships! |
| According to a reliable foreign correspondent, the keel of a big Oil-Engine Warship for the German Navy is to be laid shortly. Krupp has a design for a single cylinder of 4,000 H.P.! He has had a six-cylinder engine of 2,000 H.P., each cylinder successfully running for over a year. | |
| VIII.— | Anyhow, it must be admitted that the burning of oil to raise steam is a roundabout way of getting power! The motor car and the aeroplane take little drops of oil and explode them in cylinders and get all the power required without being bothered with furnaces or boilers or steam engines, so we say to the marine engineer, “Go and do thou likewise!” |
| The sailor’s life on the 70,000 H.P. coal using Lion is worse than in any ship in the service owing to the constant coalings. | |
| It’s an economic waste of good material to keep men grilling in a baking fire hole at unnecessary labour and use 300 men when a dozen or so would suffice! | |
| Certainly oil at present is not a cheap fuel! but it is cheap when the advantages are taken into consideration. In an Internal Combustion Engine, according to figures given by Lord Cowdray, his Mexican oil would work out in England, when freights are normal, as equivalent to coal at twelve to fifteen shillings a ton! | |
| Oil does not deteriorate by keeping. Coal does. You can store millions of tons of oil without fear of waste or loss of power, and England has got to store those millions of tons, though this reserve may be gradually built up. The initial cost would be substantial but the investment is gilt-edged! We must and can face it. Si vis pacem para bellum! | |
| You can re-fuel a ship with oil in minutes as compared with hours with coal! | |
| At any moment during re-fuelling the oil-engine ship can fight—the coal-driven ship can’t—she is disorganized—the whole crew are black as niggers and worn out with intense physical exertion! In the oil-driven ship one man turns a tap! | |
| It’s criminal folly to allow another pound of coal on board a fighting ship!—or even in a cargo-ship either!—Krupp has a design for a cargo-ship with Internal Combustion Engines to go 40,000 (forty thousand) miles without re-fuelling! It’s vital for the British Fleet and vital for no other Fleet, to have the oil engine. That’s the strange thing! And if only the Germans knew, they’d shoot their Dr. Diesel like a dog! | |
| Sir Charles Parsons and others prefer small units. It is realised in regard to the multiplication of small units (as the Lilliputians tied up Gulliver) that though there is no important reason why cylinders shall not be multiplied on the same shaft yet the space required will be very large—the engines thus spreading themselves in the fore and aft direction—but here comes in the ingenuity of the Naval Constructor and the Marine Engineer in arranging a complete fresh adaptation of the hull space and forthwith immense fighting advantages will accrue! Far from being an insuperable objection it’s a blessing in disguise, for with a multiplicity of internal combustion engines there undoubtedly follows increased safety from serious or total breakdown, provided that suitable means are provided for disconnecting any damaged unit and also for preventing in case of such failure any damage to the rest of the system. The storage of oil fuel lends itself to a remarkable new disposition of the whole hull space. Thus a battleship could carry some five or six thousand tons of oil in her double bottoms—sufficient to go round the earth without r-fuelling. The “Non-Pareil” (being the French for the “Incomparable”) will carry over 6,000 tons of oil in her double bottoms, with an extra double bottom below those carrying the oil. This is equal to 24,000 tons of coal! | |
| This new arrangement of the hull space permits some dozen motor boats being carried in a central armoured pit (where the funnels used to be). These 60-feet motor boats would carry 21-inch Torpedoes and have a speed of 40 knots. Imagine these hornets being let loose in a sea fight! The 21-inch Torpedo which they carry goes 5 miles! And the silhouette of an Internal Combustion Battleship is over 30 per cent. less than any living or projected Battleship in the target offered to the enemy’s fire. | |
| IX.— | Finally: |
| To be first in the race is everything! | |
| Just consider our immense gains in having been first with the water-tube boiler! First with the turbine! First with the 13½-inch gun! Just take this last as an illustration! We shall have 16 ships armed with the 13½-inch gun before the Germans have a single ship with anything bigger than the 12-inch, and the 13½-inch is as superior to the 12-inch as the 12-inch is to a peashooter. | |
| And yet we hesitate to plunge with a Motor Battleship! Why boggle at this plunge when we have plunged before, every time with success? | |
| People say Internal Combustion Propulsion in a hundred thousand horse-power Dreadnought is similarly impossible! “Wait and see!”—The “Non-Pareil” is coming along! | |
| The rapid development of the oil engine is best illustrated by the fact that a highly influential and rich German syndicate have arranged for six passenger steamers for the Atlantic and Pacific Trade, of 22 knots speed and 36,000 H.P. with nine of Krupp’s cylinders of 4,000 H.P. each on three shafts.12 | |
| There need be no fear of an oil famine because of the immense sure oil areas recently brought to notice in Canada, Persia, Mesopotamia and elsewhere. The British oil area in Trinidad alone will be able to more than supply all the requirements of the British Navy. Assuming the present coal requirements of the Navy at 1½ million tons annually, then less than half a million tons of oil would suffice when the whole British Navy is oil engined, and, as recently remarked by the greatest oil magnate, this amount would be a bagatelle compared with the total output of oil, which he expects before many years to reach an output of a hundred million tons a year in consequence of the great demand for developing its output and the discovery of new oil areas and the working of shale deposits. |
We turned coal-burning Battleships that were building in November, 1914, into oilers, with great increase of efficiency and speed.
I have chanced upon a Memorandum on “Oil and its Fighting Attributes,” which I drew up on March 3rd, 1913, for the First Lord of the Admiralty. It shows what a Great Personality can effect. I was told by an enemy of Mr. Deterding (of whom I am speaking) that when he came in as Manager of the Great Shell Oil Combine, the Concern could have been bought for £40,000. When I wrote my Memorandum, it was valued by a hostile Oil Magnate (who told me this himself) at forty millions sterling. Whether it is Oil, or Peace, or War, it’s the Man, and not the System that Wins. And Mr. Deterding is the man who shifted the centre of gravity of oil (together with an immense assemblage of clerks and chemists and all the paraphernalia of a huge financial web) from abroad to this country.
“The ideal accumulator which everybody has been after for the last 50 years, is oil. There will never be found another accumulator or source of power of such small volume as oil.
“Just fancy! Get a gallon of oil and a man can go to Brighton and back again, carrying the weight of his bicycle and himself by means of it....
“It’s a shame that anybody is allowed to put oil under a boiler—for this reason, that when oil is used in an oil engine it realises about five times greater effect....
“The moment the price of oil is £5 a ton it will not be used anywhere under a boiler for steam raising, and the whole world’s supply will be available for the Navy and the Diesel Engine....
“I am going to raise every penny I can get and build storage, and even when I have built five million tons of storage I am still going on building it and filling it, even if it is only for the pleasure of looking at it. It is always so much condensed labour stored for the future....
“Oil fuel when stored, does not deteriorate as coal does. The stocks would therefore constitute a national asset, the intrinsic value of which would not diminish.”... (Mr. Deterding before the Royal Commission on Oil and Oil Engines.)
My Memorandum was as follows:—
Mr. Deterding in his evidence before the Royal Commission, confesses that he possesses in Roumania, in Russia, in California, in the Dutch Indies, in Trinidad, and shortly in Mexico, the controlling interest in oil. The Anglo-Persian Company also say he is getting Mesopotamia and squeezing Persia which are practically untouched areas of immense size reeking with oil. Without doubt Mr. Deterding is Napoleonic in his audacity and Cromwellian in his thoroughness. Sir Thomas Browning in his evidence says that the Royal Dutch-Shell Combination is more powerful and aggressive than ever was the great Standard Oil Trust of America.
Let us therefore listen with deep attention to the words of a man who has the sole executive control of the most powerful organisation on earth for the production of a source of power which almost doubles the power of our Navy whilst our potential enemies remain normal in the strength of their fleets. What does he advise?
He says: “Oil is the most extraordinary article in the commercial world and the only thing that hampers its sale is its production. There is no other article in the world where you can get the consumption as long as you make the production. In the case of oil make the production first as the consumption will come. There is no need to look after the consumption, and as a seller you need not make forward contracts as the oil sells itself.” Only what you want is an enormously long purse to be able to snap your fingers at everybody and if people do not want to buy it to-day to be able to say to them: “All right; I will spend a million sterling in making reservoirs and then in the future you will have to pay so much more.” “The great point for the Navy is to get oil from someone who can draw supplies from many spots, because no one spot can be absolutely relied on.” There is not anybody who can be certain of his supply; oil fields in my own experience which at the time yielded 18,000 barrels a day within five days went down to 3,000 barrels without the slightest warning.
The British Empire “has the long purse”; build reservoirs and store oil. Keep on building reservoirs and buy oil at favourable rates when they offer.
November 21st, 1917.
The report below of the Secretary of the United States Navy is interesting. I have just been looking up the record in 1886, when high officials said I was an “Oil Maniac.” I was at that time at the Admiralty as Director of Naval Ordnance, and was sent from that appointment to be Admiral Superintendent of Portsmouth Dockyard, prior to being appointed Controller of the Navy, where I remained six years. At Portsmouth Dockyard, while I was Admiral Superintendent, we paved the way for rapid shipbuilding in the completion of the Battleship “Royal Sovereign” in two years. Afterwards, with the same superintendence but additional vigour, we completed the “Dreadnought” in one year and one day ready for Battle!
Oil Burning Battleships
Washington.
Mr. Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, issues a report urging that Congress should authorise the construction of three Battleships, one Battle Cruiser, and nine Fleet Submarines. He favours oil-burning units, and says that the splendid work which has been accomplished by these vessels would not have been done by coal-burning ships. The use of any other power but oil is not now in sight.