Marine Engineer Quotes

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Control oil and you control money. That's how you become a dominant player in the new Great Game—the one that Putin has been playing so masterfully in his effort to engineer the demise of the dollar.
Marin Katusa (The Colder War: How the Global Energy Trade Slipped from America's Grasp)
There were early mornings–“zero dark thirty,” as they were called–when a special operations helicopter would appear, 300 feet from his quarters. These were UH-60 Blackhawks, which staged on the taxiway far from the rest of the camp. The crews waited in the middle of the night, engines and rotors engaged, until they were called in for a raid as part of a task force so secretive that even its designation was classified.
Cate Folsom (Smoke the Donkey: A Marine's Unlikely Friend)
Farragut's first visitor was his wife. He was raking leaves in yard Y when the PA said that 734-508-32 had a visitor. He jogged up the road past the firehouse and into the tunnel. It was four flights up to cellblock F. "Visitor," he said to Walton, who let him into his cell. He kept his white shirt prepared for visits. It was dusty. He washed his face and combed his hair with water. "Don't take nuttin but a handkerchief," said the guard. "I know, I know, I know...." Down he went to the door of the visitor's room, where he was frisked. Through the glass he saw that his visitor was Marcia. There were no bars in the visitor's room, but the glass windows were chicken-wired and open only at the top. A skinny cat couldn't get in or out, but the sounds of the prison moved in freely on the breeze. She would, he knew, have passed three sets of bars - clang, clang, clang - and waited in an anteroom where there were pews or benches, soft-drink engines and a display of the convict's art with prices stuck in the frames. None of the cons could paint, but you could always count on some wet-brain to buy a vase of roses or a marine sunset if he had been told that the artist was a lifer. There were no pictures on the walls of the visitor's room but there were four signs that said: NO SMOKING, NO WRITING, NO EXCHANGE OF OBJECTS, VISITORS ARE ALLOWED ONE KISS.
John Cheever (Falconer)
Rather than inserting more Marines and engineers to harden and defend the American Embassy—thus sending an unequivocal message that such an assault against American sovereign territory in the heart of Tehran would never be tolerated again—the bureaucrats back at the White House and State Department had panicked. They’d reduced the embassy’s staff from nearly a thousand to barely sixty. The Pentagon had shown a similar lack of resolve. The number of U.S. military forces in-country had been drawn down from about ten thousand active-duty troops to almost none. The only reason Charlie had been sent in—especially as green as he was—was because he happened to be one of the few men in the entire U.S. diplomatic corps who was actually fluent in Farsi. None of the three CIA guys on site even spoke the language.
Joel C. Rosenberg (The Auschwitz Escape)
Few witnesses agree, and fewer still were granted a glimpse of the Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine. Its course took it under the earth and down hills, gouging up the land beneath the luxurious homes of wealthy mariners and shipping magnates, under the muddy flats where sat the sprawling sawmill, and down along the corridors, cellars, and storage rooms of general stores, ladies' notions shops, apothecaries, and yes ... the banks.
Cherie Priest
A RIB is a rigid inflatable boat, and this has an engine at the rear which pushes the nose up and out of the water as it bounces along at a great speed. This was a good-sized one and I realised that it must have an antigrav component because it never sank in the water though the team of Neptunians got on with us. The marine engineer steering it took us out to the dive boat, a large – to our eyes – vessel over a mile offshore. We sat back and gripped the rope lacings along the sides and breathed in salt spray air, grinning foolishly at our friends and each other. The RIB engine was so noisy that we couldn’t really talk but we were relishing being right down at water level, streaking across the Thames estuary, heading for the most dangerous boat in the world.
Clare O'Beara (Dining Out Around The Solar System)
The engineers wanted us to be able to blow the booby traps we found so others wouldn’t get killed. Some guys really got off working with explosives. I mean, their eyes lit up, and they got all happy. It did weird things to people. It was interesting as hell to me, but I knew how dangerous that shit was.
Ed Kugler (Dead Center: A Marine Sniper's Two-Year Odyssey in the Vietnam War)
Angry activists on Cape Cod were pushing to halt construction of this tunnel, fearful that all the wastewater flowing out of it would harm marine life and damage the ecologically fragile waters off the Atlantic coast.
Neil Swidey (Trapped Under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles Into the Darkness)
An exceptionally qualified high school graduate could procure an appointment to either the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs or the Naval Academy in Annapolis.* After four years of training and study, usually in an engineering or technical field, a graduate earned an accredited bachelor’s degree and was commissioned into the Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps.
Dan Hampton (Lords of the Sky: Fighter Pilots and Air Combat, from the Red Baron to the F-16)
At first light we were in the ammo dump and right on schedule my platoon showed up.  They were Marines, and as such, eager to get the job done.  That was the good news, the bad news was not a single one of them had ever seen a Harrier engine, I think some of them had never seen the engine in their parents car, but they could recognize shiny metal when they saw it and that would be good enough.  The Platoon Sgt had managed to scrounge up magnets from some place and when I asked him about the magnets he said, “Well Sir, ‘THEY’ said we’d be looking for something metal and I thought the magnets would certainly help out here in the bush, we can drag them around.”      “Outstanding Sgt, just goddamned OUTSTANDING.
W.R. Spicer (Sea Stories of a U.S. Marine Book 4 Harrier)
the Col slammed his canopy and immediately started his engine.  Lt Eicher was calling trying to tell him what the DASC had said but he either didn’t hear or wasn’t going to pay attention.  We could hear him doing his engine accels once he taxied onto the runway and in a flash he was rolling down the runway. The fog was low enough now that we couldn’t see the tops of the pine trees.  We heard the “Whoosh” of the nozzles being slammed down and watched the aircraft jump into the air and disappear into the fog.  I think we both waited for the sound of an ejection or crash but all we heard was the aircraft at full power climbing away.      Todd turned to me and said, “That may be the last time we’ll see that man alive.”      Poor Lt Eicher was horrified and looked at Major Eikenberry with this look on his face and said, “What do I do now?
W.R. Spicer (Sea Stories of a U.S. Marine Book 4 Harrier)
I made a date with her for the following week.  Mid-week, I went for a ride in a T-28.  The engine failed, the pilot slid the plane into the sand of the Mojave out near El Centro, and I slid into a hospital bed for about ten days at North Island Naval Air Station.  While I was in the hospital, the CARDIV left for WestPac.  I called Marguerite and told her what happened and that I wanted to see her again.  I’m not sure she believed me, but agreed to another date.  Unfortunately it had to be a short date because I had to head for Norton Air Force base to catch a flight for Hawaii, to meet up with the CARDIV.
W.R. Spicer (Sea Stories of a U.S. Marine, Book 1, Stripes to Bars)
And dozens of stories hailed Jobs as the master P-type innovator of his generation. Just like Edwin Land and Juan Trippe before him. Abandon hardware? Not this Moses. In fact, Jobs had already doubled down. Not long after he left Apple, Jobs got back in touch with the team of engineers in Marin County developing a graphics computer. Why bet on just one bigger, faster machine if you could have two? He bought their business and left them alone to build an even more powerful computer than NeXT. Jobs had no idea that those engineers held the key to rescuing him from the Moses Trap. And it would have nothing to do with their machine.
Safi Bahcall (Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries)
The military implications are obvious, if difficult to act upon in today’s fiscal environment. There’s a clear and continuing need for Marines, for amphibious units and naval supply ships, for platforms that allow operations in littoral and riverine environments, and for capabilities that enable expeditionary logistics in urbanized coastal environments. Rotary-wing or tilt-rotor aircraft, and precise and discriminating weapons systems, will also be needed. There’s also a clear need to structure ground forces so that they can rapidly aggregate or disaggregate forces and fires, enabling them to operate in a distributed, small-unit mode while still being able to concentrate quickly to mass their effect against a major target. Combat engineers, construction engineers, civil affairs units, intelligence systems that can make sense of the clutter of urban areas, pre-conflict sensing systems such as geospatial tools that allow early warning of conflict and instability, and constabulary and coast guard capabilities are also likely to be important. The ability to operate for a long period in a city without drawing heavily on that city’s water, fuel, electricity, or food supply will be important as well, with very significant implications for expeditionary logistics. I go into detail on all these issues, and other military aspects of the problem, in the Appendix.
David Kilcullen (Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla)
The black ash that inundated the island was suitable for a superior quality of concrete, and the resulting caves, bunkers, pillboxes and large rooms were elaborate. Up to one quarter of the entire garrison was enlisted in the tunneling, and while some of the caves were suitable for two to three men with gear, others could hold up to 400, with multiple entrances and exits to prevent forces from becoming trapped. Ventilation systems were engineered to contend with the danger of sulfur fumes common to the island. On Mount Suribachi itself, the 60 foot-deep crater with a 20 foot ledge on which one could walk the entire circumference of the rim was particularly well-developed as a fortress. The Japanese had constructed elaborate caves all the way around the crater, and according to one of the 28th Marines who took the summit, “It was down in the crater that the Japanese were honey-combed.”[3]
Charles River Editors (The Greatest Battles in History: The Battle of Iwo Jima)
Tug or tow boats are vessels that push or pull other vessels such as barges, oil platforms, or disabled ships. They are also used to help maneuver larger ships that do not have the capability to do so for themselves, in tight quarters, rivers or in coming alongside piers. Obviously tugboats have powerful engines for their size and are sturdy enough to withstand high stress on their construction. The earlier tugboats had steam engines, however now they mostly have diesel engines. In addition many harbor tugs are been fitted with firefighting equipment allowing them to assist in firefighting. Harbor tugs that are highly maneuverable and used to assist ships in their docking procedure. Pusher tugs or notch tugs nest into the stern of specially designed barges. When locked together they are frequently considered ships and are required to show the navigational lights of a towing vessel pushing ahead or compliant with those required of ships. There are seagoing tugs that tow oil rigs, oceangoing barges etc. The US Navy frequently uses the larger seagoing tugs they identify as fleet tugs. River tugs are also referred to as towboats or push boats, depending on what they are called on to do, however they have a severely limited freeboard and are dangerous on open waters. The tasks tugboats undertake are varied and the list is endless. Tugboats help fight fires and in cold climates are sometimes used as icebreakers. A relatively new innovation for marine propulsion is the “Voith Schneider Propeller System” which is highly maneuverable, allowing the boat to change its direction instantly. This system is now widely used on harbor tugs.
Hank Bracker (Suppressed I Rise)
One of the more useful things I learned as a midshipman at Maine Maritime Academy were the names of the seven masts of a seven masted schooner. When I mentioned to the 600 people in attendance at a Homecoming event that my degree was a BS in Marlinspike Seamanship no one laughed, leaving me in the embarrassing position of having to explain that actually I had a Bachelor of Marine Science degree. Later looking into a mirror I convinced myself that I really didn’t look old enough to have lived in an era when wooden ships were sailed by iron men. What I remembered was that we were wooden men sailing on iron ships that were actually made of steel, however I can remember schooners sailing along the coast of New England and I do remember the seven names of a seven masted schooner. In actual fact only one seven masted schooner was ever built and she was the she a 475 foot, steel hulled wind driven collier/tanker named the Thomas W. Lawson, named after a Boston millionaire, stock-broker, book author, and President of the Boston Bay State Gas Co. Launched in 1902 she held the distinction of being the largest pure sail ship ever built. Originally the names of the masts were the foremast, mainmast, mizzenmast, spanker, jigger, driver, and pusher. Later the spanker became the kicker and the spanker moved to next to last place, with the pusher becoming the after mast. Depending on whom you talked to, the names and their order drifted around and a lot of different naming systems were formed. Some systems used numbers and others the days of the week, however there are very few, if any of the iron men left to dispute what the masts were called. The Thomas W. Lawson had two steam winches and smaller electrically driven winches, to raise and lower her huge sails. The electricity was provided by a generator, driven by what was termed a donkey engine. On November 20, 1907 the large 475 foot schooner sailed for England. Experiencing stormy weather she passed inside of the Bishop Rock lighthouse and attempted to anchor. That night both anchor chains broke, causing the ship to smash against Shag Rock near Annet. The schooner, pounded by heavy seas capsized and sank. Of the 19 souls aboard Captain George W. Dow and the ships engineer Edward L. Rowe were the only survivors. Everyone else, including the pilot, drown and were buried in a mass grave in St Agnes cemetery.
Hank Bracker
Castine is a quiet town with a population of about 1,500 people in Western Hancock County, Maine, named after John Hancock, when Maine was a part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He was the famous statesman, merchant and smuggler who signed the “Declaration of Independence” with a signature large enough so that the English monarch, King George, could read it without glasses. Every child in New England knows that John Hancock was a prominent activist and patriot during the colonial history of the United States and not just the name of a well-known Insurance Company. Just below the earthen remains of Fort George, on both sides of Pleasant Street, lays the campus of Maine Maritime Academy. Prior to World War II, this location was the home of the Eastern State Normal School, whose purpose was to train grade school teachers. Maine Maritime Academy has significantly grown over the years and is now a four-year college that graduates officers and engineers for the United States Merchant Marine, as well as educating students in marine-related industries such as yacht and small craft management. Bachelor Degrees are offered in Engineering, International Business and Logistics, Marine Transportation, and Ocean Studies. Graduate studies are offered in Global Logistics and Maritime Management, as well as in International Logistics Management. Presently there are approximately 1,030 students enrolled at the Academy. Maine Maritime Academy's ranking was 7th in the 2016 edition of Best Northern Regional Colleges by U.S. News and World Report. The school was named the Number One public college in the United States by Money Magazine. Photo Caption: Castine, Maine
Hank Bracker
Two-One Alpha, ready for you. Move it. We’re in kind of a hurry to find a quieter place!” Two wounded men were hauled to the helicopter first by four of their buddies, with the rest strafing the hill to keep the Taliban heads down. The fright and panic in the eyes and faces of the soldiers were clearly visible. Their screams rose above the thundering noise of the engines as they pushed the wounded in and then took up position outside the chopper to provide covering fire for the remaining men to get in. “All in. Let’s get out of here!” Leo shouted. “Grab tight. It’s going to be a rough ride boys!” John pulled the chopper into a steep climb while banking away from the hill. With no fire coming from the doorgun to keep them down, the full force and frustration of the enemy was now directed at the chopper and its occupants. They saw their prey escaping out of their hands right in front of their eyes. A burning pain shot through John’s back and legs as the body of the helicopter shuddered under the power of the two Rolls-Royce Gem turboshaft engines at full throttle. Smoke started to billow from the starboard engine. I have to get over that hill three miles away. Why am I dizzy? I have to get these boys out of trouble. I have to level the chopper and save power. I must get over that hill. I must get out of the reach of the bullets. “Doug! Doug! Can you hear me? What’s wrong man?” Leo screamed in a high-pitched, panicked voice. “Oh my God, you’ve been hit! Are you ok? Shit man, put the chopper down now. You’ll crash and kill us all!” “That hill … I have to get over it … out of range … I must get us there ...” Doug stuttered. “What was that? I can’t hear you. For God’s sake put the chopper down!” Leo shouted at the top of his voice. “Going down, going down … radio for help!” John whispered, a few seconds before everything went dark. The nightmare and the math Doug paid little heed to his passengers as he banked away from the canyon rim. Max was back there to help them. Doug had plenty on his mind, between the flashback to his crash in Afghanistan and wondering when whoever had shot two of his passengers would show up and try to shoot the chopper down here and now, over the Grand Canyon. Not to mention nursing the aging machine to do his bidding. Within minutes after takeoff from the canyon site, lying in the back of the chopper, JR and Roy were oblivious to their surroundings due to the morphine injection administered to them by Max Ellis – an ex-Marine medic and the third member of the Rossler boys’ rescue expedition. Others on the chopper had more on their minds. Raj was in his own world, eyes closed, wondering about his wife Sushma, their child, and the future. He and Sushma were not the outdoors adventure and camping types – living in a cave with other people was going to take some getting used to for them. They both grew up and had lived in the city all their lives. How was this going to work out
J.C. Ryan (The Phoenix Agenda (Rossler Foundation, #6))
It was as if Lucca was a beautiful kite and Willingham was flying her with an invisible string. Roche, the Ninety-fourth Engineer Detachment Commander, who oversaw about twenty-six dog handlers from the army, air force, and marines, had never seen a dog and handler so perfectly synchronized.
Maria Goodavage (Top Dog: The Story of Marine Hero Lucca)
Dan Corrieri trained in engineering graphics, statistical process control, accounting manufacturing methods, finance, management, engineering economy, marketing, design processes in technology and engineering mechanics. Daniel Corrieri was a veteran of the United States Marine Corps Reserves with an honorable discharge. In addition, Daniel Corrieri has gained plenty of volunteer experience with Toys for Tots through the Marine Corps, community service for the American Cancer Society, church service and other excellent opportunities.
Dan Corrieri
Jason Hudak to head the platform team. Jason had worked at Yahoo for more than a decade, building the infrastructure to support their thousands of engineers. Jason is probably not what you imagine when you think of a software engineer. He’s a ruddy-faced Texan and a former Marine. He went to Texas Tech and studied business, not computer science. He’s more or less self-taught, having learned to write code after landing a job at a tech company in the 1990s and studying alongside engineers who recognized his potential. Jason spends his free time snorkeling, cycling, and hunting wild boars in Texas.
Jeff Lawson (Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century)
Rudolf Diesel deliberately set out to design a new, more efficient, prime mover, and by 1897 his first (heavy and stationary) engine had reached an efficiency of 30 percent, double the performance of the best steam engines.[40] But the first marine engine was installed only in 1912 on Christian X, a Danish freighter. Diesel-powered ships carried much less fuel than coal-fired steamers, but could travel further without refueling because the new engines were nearly twice as efficient—and because, per unit of mass, diesel oil contains nearly twice as much energy. An
Vaclav Smil (How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going)
Mom was an MD/PhD who worked as a genetic engineer. Dad was a Navy SEAL for four years before leaving to get a PhD in marine biology.
Douglas E. Richards (Portals)
Our main problem over the past few days and weeks,’ he said, ‘has lain in trying to connect the various phenomena. In fact, there wasn’t any obvious connection until a jelly-like substance started to crop up. Sometimes it appeared in small quantities, sometimes in larger amounts, but always with the distinguishing characteristic that it disintegrated rapidly on contact with air. Unfortunately the discovery of the jelly only added to the mystery, given its presence in crustaceans, mussels and whales - three types of organism that could hardly be more different. Of course, it might have been some kind of fungus, a jellified version of rabies, an infectious disease like BSE or swine fever. But, if so, why would ships be disappearing or crabs transporting killer algae? There was no sign of the jelly on the worms that infested the slope. They were carrying a different kind of cargo - bacteria that break down hydrates and cause methane gas to rise. Hence the landslide and the tsunami. And what about the mutated species that have been emerging all over the world? Even fish have been behaving oddly. None of it adds up. In that respect, Jack Vanderbilt was right to discern an intelligent mind behind the chaos. But he overestimated our ability - no scientist knows anything like enough about marine ecology to be capable of manipulating it to that extent. People are fond of saying that we know more about space than we do about the oceans. It’s perfectly true, but there’s a simple reason why: we can’t see or move as well in the water as we can in outer space. The Hubble telescope peers effortlessly into different galaxies, but the world’s strongest floodlight only illuminates a dozen square metres of seabed. An astronaut in a spacesuit can move with almost total freedom, but even the most sophisticated divesuit won’t stop you being crushed to death beyond a certain depth. AUVs and ROVs are only operational if the conditions are right. We don’t have the physical constitution or the technology to deposit billions of worms on underwater hydrates, let alone the requisite knowledge to engineer them for a habitat that we barely understand. Besides, there are all the other phenomena: deep-sea cables being destroyed at the bottom of the ocean by forces other than the underwater slide; plagues of jellyfish and mussels rising from the abyssal plains. The simplest explanation would be to see these developments as part of a plan, but such a plan could only be the work of a species that knows the ocean as intimately as we do the land - a species that lives in the depths and plays the dominant role in that particular universe.
Frank Schätzing (The Swarm: A Novel)
THE WEBSITE FOR SSA Marine says, “Accelerating the Pace of Business.” Its terminal is now giving off a deafening whir: engine sounds, horns, beeps, and the echoes of workers shouting. The giant cranes lift containers off the ship, sliding them inward fast enough that they swing a little bit in midair. Currently, the bay is full of the haze-lightened silhouettes of container ships, players in that sprawling, fractal network whose workings have recently come to the fore in headlines about the supply chain. In the restored marsh along the park, clusters of migrating shorebirds are keeping their own schedule. It’s currently three hours from high tide, and on the shrinking islands, tiny sandpipers sit together so densely that they look like a tessellated pattern. Stalking around them are a variety of spidery birds, including long-billed curlews, which have surreal curved beaks more than half the length of their entire bodies. They are back for the time being, having traveled northeast to breed—possibly as far as Idaho—and in the meantime, they adjust their activities to the tides. On the one hand, it is true that you can see multiple forms of time here. The containers pile up; the shorebirds probe the mud; the phoebe chases its flies; a small, brown mushroom pushes up from the grass; and the tide continues to rise. Your stomach rumbles. But one of these clocks is not like the others. In order to maintain its equilibrium, it has to run ahead faster and faster.
Jenny Odell (Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture)
against them, how the sight of those sturdy Yankees brought hope to overwrought France, how they buckled down to their appointed task, one of the most difficult in the whole military regime, and how, when the need arose, they threw down their tools and picked up arms and proceeded to kill Germans. I hope some day a book will be written about the Engineers, as this one is being written about the Marines. The Engineers were the first to land on French soil, but the Marines were a close second. After General Pershing
Albertus Wright Catlin ("With the Help of God and a Few Marines": The Battles of Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood)
In the early 1980s, two American scientists, Thomas McMahon and John Tyler Bonner, looked at nearly 40 engines of all kinds (automotive, air, marine) whose power and weight ranged, respectively, from about 330 watts to 21 megawatts and from 135 grams to 102.3 tons, and found that their maximum power output scaled at nearly the same rate as engine mass.32 A recent study of four-stroke car engines, including Ford, Honda, Kawasaki, and Subaru designs, confirmed this scaling by finding that their peak power output scales with 0.95th power of the engine size.
Vaclav Smil (Size: How It Explains the World)
the twenty major technological developments which lie between the first marine engine and the Polaris submarine, the Admiralty machine has discouraged, delayed, obstructed or positively rejected seventeen.
Norman F. Dixon (On the Psychology of Military Incompetence)
second tube. The fuel will continue to flow freely. FIGURE 3-9. A way to siphon fuel without getting a mouthful! (Fritz Seegers)
Nigel Calder (Marine Diesel Engines: Maintenance, Troubleshooting, and Repair)
From the beginning, the SS Deutschland was beset by problems, She was known as the “Cocktail Shaker” when she was first launched in 1923. On her trials, it was noticed that the ship had a serious vibration problem due to an imbalance in her twin shafts or perhaps her massive bronze propellers. Because of a lack of funding, this vibration was accepted and remained so for the first six years of her existence. It was an embarrassment to have a ship represent the German Merchant Marine, Handelsmarine, that was handicapped from the start. However, she was still considered the pride of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, a company with rich traditions that was founded in 1847. So, when the Deutschland left Hamburg for the first time on March 27, 1924, she moved slowly down the Elbe River past Blohm und Voss, the massive dockyard where she had been built. At the time of her maiden voyage, the entire city celebrated when the Deutschland headed down the Elbe River towards the North Sea. Other ships in the harbor fittingly saluted her by blowing their deep throaty whistles, as small craft such as tugboats and fireboats pumped frothy white streams of the brackish river water high into the air. By the time I boarded her for my voyage to the United States in November, 1934, the SS Deutschland was over 11 years old and, although she was still Hamburg-Amerika Line’s flagship, she was beginning to show her age. Germans, who prided themselves in their knowledge of science and engineering, were falling behind other European countries. Paying retribution to the victors of World War I had drained the German treasury and as a nation, they resented it. Hostility had increased and the pressure it put on the people was obvious. Many looked to Hitler to make “Germany great again.
Hank Bracker
The Empire State was a relatively quiet ship since she only used steam power to drive the turbines, which then spun the generators that made the electricity needed to energize the powerful electric motors, which were directly geared to turn the propeller shafts. All in all, the ship was nearly vibration free, making for a smooth ride. With the sound of three short blasts on the ship’s whistle, we backed away from the pier. This ship was unlike most ships and we all noticed a definite difference in her sounds and vibrations. At that time, most American vessels were driven by steam propulsion that relied on superheating water. The reciprocating steam engines, with their large pistons, were the loudest as they hissed and wheezed, turning a huge crankshaft. Steam turbines were relatively vibration free, but live steam was always visible as it powered the many pumps, winches, etc. Steam is powerful and efficient, but can be dangerous and even deadly. Diesel engines were seldom used on the larger American ships of that earlier era since they were not considered cost or energy efficient. Led by German ships, diesel driven vessels, they are now the most popular engines in use. The NS Savanna was the only nuclear merchant ship, ever built. Launched in July 21 1959, at a cost of $46.9 million, the NS Savannah was a demo-project for the potential use of nuclear energy. She was deactivated in 1971, and is now located at the Canton Marine Terminal in Baltimore, Maryland.
Hank Bracker