Oakfield - Launch

LAUNCH AT WEST HARTLEPOOL

Northern Daily Mail, Feb 3/12

Yesterday, Messrs. William Gray and Company, Limited.  launched the handsome steel screw steamer Oakfield,  which they have built for the Doughty Shipping Co., Limited (Messrs H. Doughty and Company, West Hartlepool, managers).

She will take the highest class in Lloyd’s Register, and is of the following dimensions, viz.: Length over all, 371ft. 6in.; breadth, 5ft.; and depth, 25ft. 1 ½ in., with extra long bridge, poop, and top-gallant forecastle.

The saloon, staterooms, captain’s, officers, and engineers’ rooms, etc., will be fitted up in houses on the bridge deck, and the crew’s berths in the forecastle.

The hull is built with deep bulb-angle frames, cellular double bottom, and large 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., 40 ½ in., and 67in. diameter, with a piston stroke of 45in., and three large steel boilers for a working pressure of 180lbs. per square inch.

The ship and machinery have been built under the superintendence of Mr. H. Brandin, on behalf of the owners, and the ceremony of naming the steamer Oakfield was gracefully performed by Miss. Elizabeth Garmondsway Waldy, Darlington.

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