First 100% diesel-powered ships of the Royal Navy

Hello,

As is well-know, the Royal Navy decided to shift from coal-powered warships to oil-powered warship in 1911 or so. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was involved in this decision.

However, I would like to clarify whether the existing ships had their engines changed or whether the decision only applied to newly launched warships.

Also, was the transition straight from coal-steam engines to diesel engines, or was there an intermediate period of dual propulsion systems, that is steam engines.powered by oil instead of coal? In other words, what were the first warships solely propulsed with internal combustion diesel engines?

I suppose there is some litterature on the matter and I would be thankful to anyone pointing it.

Mori

 

Not sure where the idea is from that they used diesel internal combustion engines?

They used fuel oil boilers for steam raising.

Fuel Oil - History

The first major warships to go Diesel were the German Panzerschiffe in the mid-1920s. I am not aware the Royal Navy switched at all during the war.

Naval Gazing Main/Modern Propulsion Part 1 - Diesels

All the best

Andreas

 

Thanks, your fixing my wrong idea.about diesel. I just knew diesel were used in submarines and (wrongly) assumed such was the case in larger ships.

Do you happen to know whether some steam-boiled ships were designed so that they could easily use coal instead of oil, or just had both propulsion system on board?

 

PS : and thanks for the excellent article.

 

I think there may be some confusion here by assuming oil = diesel = internal combustion engine. Following coal the oil used to raise steam was Furnace Fuel Oil, a much thicker tarry oil. Its use in the RN continued into the 1970s. Diesel was carried in addition but this was to power generators. The last RN ship to burn FFO, as far as I am aware, was HMY Britannia and was the reason she was not deployed as a hospital ship in the Falklands War. Refuelling would have been impractical. FFO needed very controlled burning or smoke would be produced. It also created a lot of soot which necessitated a regular cleaning by 'blowing soot' and woe betide the engineer who did this by not checking the wind was on the beam.

Tim

 

My understanding is that it wasthe other way round, with the transition being a one-way from coal to oil. Once you've made that it's pretty impossible to go back, as ship design for oil would make switching back to coal impossible (lack of bunkers, boilers not designed for it etc). Then there's the issue of being able to bunker, again unlikely to maintain coal bunkering facilities once you switch over.

All the best

Andreas

 

Then you have ships that were designed with a mixed power plant. Some coal fired boilers and some oil fired. Like the Hawkins class cruisers designed in WW1 for protection of the trade routes of the Empire where oil might not always be available. Completed 1919 to 1925.

Hawkins - 4 coal & 8 oil fired boilers as completed. Coal boilers removed 1929 and oil fired ones upgraded.
Vindictive (ex Cavendish) completed as a carrier with same machinery as Hawkins. She was demilitarised in the mid-1930s to comply with the Naval Treaties and lost half her machinery. Became a repair ship in WW2.

Design was modified and the last 3 ships, Raleigh, Effingham and Frobisher received 10 oil fired boilers.

 

Thanks, that's the kind of "dual fuel" ships I was looking for. It just shows an intermediary step in the coal-to-oil transition. It's an isolated case, though.

 

WW1 isn’t really my area of expertise, but the monitors Marshall Ney & Marshall Soult we’re completed in 1915 with diesel power. But the MAN diesels proved so unreliable as to render them almost useless so they spent most of their lives as Harbour depot or training ships although both survived until post WW2. I think the experience with this pair kind of put the RN off diesel power for a while.

Some of the M15 class monitors of that era were given a “semi-diesel” machinery, whatever that means.

Then in 1928 the RN completed the submarine depot ship Medway with MAN Diesel engines. Sunk June 1942 in the eastern Med.

The next class that springs to mind were the Bangor class minesweepers deigned just before WW2. It was quickly found that, in Britain, there was insufficient diesel manufacturing capacity so only 4 were diesel powered with the remainder getting triple expansion or turbine steam machinery. Another 11 diesel powered ships of the class were built in Canada.

Quite a number of merchant ships were built in the 1930s with diesel power.

 

Here's one of them, MN Juventus (1921), originally running on steam boilers, converted by FIAT to diesel, sunk by FAA Swordfish in February 1941 off Kuriat.

All the best

Andreas

 

Indeed. And earlier. The "Flower" Motor Ship Co Ltd was established in 1912 to finance the production of ships using internal combustion engines, ie marine diesel ships, built in UK yards. The enterprise was backed by M Samuel & Co, a prominent merchant bank.

Shareholders included well-known City names, with some Germans and Turks. The vessels were petroleum/collier transports, trading with Persian Gulf, principally ‘Bassora’ (Basra) with the Asiatic Petroleum Co and Anglo-Persian Oil Co Ltd. Three ships were built, two by Swan Hunter and one by Armstrongs: ABELIA (originally Ship 860 - was shelled and sunk by U34 on 30 Dec 1915 bound for Bombay from Hull, 152 miles west of Gavdo Island, Crete). ARABIS was torpedoed by U.54 in 1917. ARUM was sold back to the builders, but lost to (the separate) UC-54 on route for Malta from Cardiff on 4 Sep 1918, 40 miles E from Pantellaria. FMS Co went into voluntary liquidation in 1917, but had been financially successful, as were the ships in fuel use and carrying capacity.

ARUM (originally Ship 916) was launched first at 3861 grt and exceeded expectation with cargo capacity of 5,900 tons against 5,500. ARABIS (Ship 922) was launched on 12 Mar 1914 at Smith’s Yard in Middlesbrough. Her first Master was Capt Pike and she was built for £54,250. Her engine fittings were initially delayed whilst snags with ARUM’s were resolved, but she did her initial sea trials on 16 Jan 1915.

ARABIS (Ship 922, built at Smith’s Dock Co, South Bank; fitted out Neptune Yard, Low Walker) had a number of early breakdowns, one requiring a tow by Admiralty tug into Bizerta (Tunisia) on her first trip on 23 Mar 1915, but was able to proceed to Port Said after repair. By Jun 1915, freight receipts showed she was carrying a cargo for £9,290 17s 10d and at speeds of up to 91⁄2 knots (attributed to the ‘Axiom’ system of lubrication).

Arabis was under 'Admiralty Orders' when she was sunk, with defensive armament manned by Navy reservists. Her engines - according to Lloyds - were a year overdue their Special Annual Survey.

 

Further to above: MV (Motor Vessel) ARUM

with the upper deck of her engine room:

and the lower section:

 

As the discussion seems to have got onto merchant ships, here is another type: the engine maker Doxford designed a series of Economy ships withe a three cylinder opposed piston diesel engine and steam auxilaries with two oil fired Scotch boilers.Sorry about any spelling mistakes, haven't got my glasses on! Someone mentioned the difficulties with FFO, we used to overcome that in cold weather by firing the boilers with diesel - too expensive now.

 

As I keep reading, I realize that the German pocket battleships of the Deutschland-class *were* propulsed by diesel engines. They were built in the early 1930's.

This is confusing as the article Andreas mentioned above claims that pre-WW2 diesel engines suffered from too many reliability issues. Wouldn't it be that German engineers fixed that, contrary to British / US?

 

German engineers were no smarter than their colleagues elsewhere. (Although some like to see this differently in our country)
But in Germany, the development of powerful large diesels for warships had been consistently promoted since 1909, and by 1917 a prototype with 12,000 hp had already been completed.
Here, the constraints due to a lack of raw materials were a decisive factor

The UK had (besides top quality Welsh coal) ample access to crude oil, so there was simply no compelling need to invest in the development of diesel engines

 

I'm not sure this analysis is correct. There was almost no crude oil in the UK, and the large supply from Persia/Iraq wasn't easy to ship to the UK once Italians proved hostile. To me, Germany and UK were in a similar situation : they lacked raw materials and had to rely on other powers to get them (US for UK, Rumania + USSR + synth oil for Germany).

 

Neither am I

But to get back to the actual thread title - this link contains some very interesting entries on the subject:
Pre WW1 Royal Navy Diesel Engines for Surface Ships

 

I think it is broadly correct, while UK did not have crude oil it could source it from many parts of the world and had the merchant fleet to carry it. The Anglo Persian oil co, (formerly the Darcy Petroleum Co ?), was British owned - hence now BP.. The Germans were largely prevented from getting oil by sea, hence their keeness to invade countries that were oil producers. In WW2 the Royal Navy ships were oil fired, but many of the merchant ships still used coal bunkers.
Incidentally there is mention above of a British Navy ship with (German) MAN engines, in my time MAN was the best German engine, and something of a world leader. Britain never had many low speed engine designers, Doxford and Kinkaid come to mind, many others were built in the UK under licence, Sulzer, B&W, etc

 

Study here of Admiralty move from coal to oil between 1898 and 1939 which contains a lot of interesting information. Note the large stocks accumulated.
https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/2932258/408161.pdf

 

Thanks for the link to another forum. It points a resourcefful discussion.

In short, it looks like development of diesel engines for capital ships started before WW1, failed in the UK, was succesful in Germany. British admiralty concluded that diesel engines were not the best solution and kept using oil-burners, while the German navy eventually fitted diesel engines to capital ships.

Seems a case of technological divergence rather than lack of maturityy of the (diesel) technology.