Boukadra

Steamship Boukadra.

LAUNCH AT WEST HARTLEPOOL

Daily Mail June 11/10

Yesterday,  Messrs. William Gray and Company., Limited., launched the handsome steel screw steamer “Boukadra”, which they have built to the order of Messrs. Frank C. Strick and Co., Ltd., of London and Swansea, for La Tunisienne Steam Navigation Company, of Paris.

She will take the highest class in Lloyd’s and is of the following dimensions, viz.: Length over all, 362ft., breadth, 50ft., and depth, 25ft. 11 ½ in, with long bridge, poop, and top-gallant forecastle.

The saloon, staterooms, captain’s and officers’ rooms will be fitted up in the poop, and the engineers in houses on the bridge deck, and the crew’s berths in the forecastle. An electric light installation is being fitted throughout.

The hull is built with deep bulb-angle frames, cellular double bottom, and large aft peak ballast tank, ten steam winches, steam steering gear amidships, hand screw gear aft, patent direct steam windlass, large horizontal multitubular donkey boiler, stockless anchors, telescopic masts fore and aft rig, boats on deck overhead and all requirements for a first class cargo steamer, including Porter’s patent derrick sockets for dealing with heavy lifts by combining the ships ordinary derricks.

Triple-expansion engines are being supplied by the Central Marine Engineering Works of the builders, having cylinders 24in., 36in., and 64in. Diameter, with a piston stroke of 42in., and two large steel boilers for a working pressure of 180lbs. per square inch worked under Howden’s system of forced draught.

The ship and machinery have been constructed under the superintendence of Mr. Archibald Walker on behalf of the owners, the ceremony of naming the steamer Boukadra was gracefully performed by Miss Gibb, The Grove West Hartlepool.

    

TRIAL TRIP OF THE s.s. BOUKADRA

(Northern) Daily mail **/9/10

Yesterday, the handsome steel screw steamer Boukadra, built by Messrs. Wm Gray and Co., Ltd., to the order of Messrs. Frank C. Strick and Co., Ltd., of London and Swansea, for La Tunisienne Steam Navigation Co., of Paris, had her trial trip.

The vessel has been built to Lloyd’s highest class, and is of the following dimensions, viz.: Length over all, 362ft., breadth, 50ft., and depth, 25ft. 11 ½ in. A description of the vessel has already appeared in the “Mail”

Triple-expansion engines have supplied by the Central Marine Engineering Works of the builders, having cylinders 24in., 36in., and 64in. diameter, by 42in. stroke, and two large steel boilers adapted for a pressure of 180lbs. per square inch, worked under Howden’s system of forced draught. The portings in the cylinders are large to insure an easy passage for the steam, and so obtain the maximum efficiency from it. The engines are fitted with a “contraflo” main condenser a “contraflo” atmospheric type condenser being installed for the auxiliary machinery. A Morrison surface feed heater combined with oil and air extractor, is also fitted, the engine room auxiliaries, including a number of duplex pumps of the builders “Cmew” type, being very complete and carried out in accordance with the requirement of the owners’ superintendent engineer.  The leading feature of the condenser design is a new method of temperature regulation by means of which the air withdrawing capacity of the air pump can be so adjusted to the demand that the thermal efficiency of the engines is at a maximum under all conditions of working, this arrangement having a favourable influence on economy.

Mr. Archibald Walker, who has superintended the construction of ship and machinery, represented the owners on the trial, Mr. James Innes, Lloyd’s Registry, Mr. Porter, the builders of the ship and Mr Maurice S. Gibb the builders of the machinery. A speed of 11 ½ knots was obtained.