LAUNCH AT WEST HARTLEPOOL
Northern Daily Mail, July 28/11
Today, Messrs. William Gray and Company, Limited, launched the handsome steel screw steamer Roselands, which they have built for Messrs. the Wilson Shipping Company, Limited, West Hartlepool (Messrs. Joseph F. Wilson and Company managers).
She will take the highest class in Lloyd’s register, and is of the following dimensions, viz.: Length over all, 387ft.; breadth, 51ft. 3in.; and depth, 28ft. 6in., with long bridge, poop, and top-gallant forecastle.
The saloon, staterooms, captain’s, officers, and engineers’ rooms, etc., will be fitted up with houses on the bridge deck, and the crew’s berths in the forecastle.
The hull is built with deep frames, cellular double bottom, and aft peak ballast tank, eight steam winches, steam steering gear amidships, hand screw gear aft, patent direct steam windlass, shifting boards throughout, stockless anchors, telescopic masts, with fore and aft rig, boats on deck overhead, and all requirements for a first class cargo steamer.
Triple-expansion engines are being supplied by the Central Marine Engineering Works of the builders, having cylinders 25in., 41 in., and 66in. diameter, with a piston stroke of 48in., and two large steel boilers for a working pressure of 180lbs. per square inch, and with a view to obtain higher speed when required, a large auxiliary boiler has been added, also with a working pressure of 180lbs. per square inch. A C. M. E.W. winch condenser, and auxiliaries of the latest type, also steam ash hoist, have been fitted.
The ship and machinery have been constructed under the superintendence of Mr. H.D. Withy, on behalf of the owners, and the ceremony of naming the steamer Roselands was gracefully performed by Mrs. Joseph F. Wilson.