LAUNCH AT WEST HARTLEPOOL
Northern Daily Mail, July 13/11
Messrs. William Gray and Company, Ltd, yesterday, launched the handsome steel screw steamer Normanby which they have built for the London and Northern Steamship Company Limited, Messrs. Pyman Brothers, London, managers.
The vessel is of the shelter deck type, and will take the highest class in Lloyd’s register. Her dimensions are: Length over all, 408ft. 6in.; breadth, 53ft. 6in.; and depth, 25ft. 5 ½ in. The saloon, staterooms, captain’s, officers, and engineers’ rooms, etc., will be fitted up with houses on the bridge deck, and the crew’s accommodation forward.
The hull is built with deep bulb-angle frames, dispensing with hold beams, and leaving large clear holds, cellular double bottom, and fore and aft peak ballast tanks, ten steam winches, derrick tables and outriggers, double derricks at each hatch, steam steering gear amidships, hand screw gear aft, patent direct steam windlass, fresh water distiller, steel grain divisions, stockless anchors, telescopic masts, 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 26in., 42 in., and 70in. diameter, with a piston stroke of 48in., 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. R. T. Rutherford on behalf of the owners, and the ceremony of naming the steamer Normanby was gracefully performed by the Honourable Miss M. E. Kitson, in the presence of Lord Airedale (chairman of the London and Northern Steamship Company Ltd.) Lady Airedale, the Honourable Miss S. Kitson, Mr W. H. S. Pyman, J.P., D. L., Miss Dorothy Pyman, Mrs W. Pyman (Enfield) Miss E. Pyman (Whitby), Mr Creswell Pyman, Mr McGlashan, Mr and Mrs. G. H. Bains, Rev J. Farmer, and others.