It is always a pleasure to welcome Old Low Light volunteer and master mariner Martin Kenny, who will share his research on the Turbinia and how the marine steam turbine invented by Charles Algernon Parsons revolutionised shipping.
Martin spent his entire working life involved with shipping, including in the Merchant Navy, then as a lecturer at the South Shields Marine School and later as a consultant for Maerske, a Danish shipping company. For 16 years he was coxswain of Tynemouth RNLI Lifeboat.
Having sailed on ships powered by marine steam turbines, he recently began researching Parsons’ invention, seeking technical advice from Derek Young, a very familiar face at the Old Low Light, who also had a successful Merchant Navy career, later working in a senior position on a Royal Navy nuclear submarine programme.
Martin will explain how Parsons, later knighted, could see the potential of ships being powered by marine steam turbines but needed a vessel to demonstrate to the Admiralty how these would work, so he commissioned Wallsend shipbuilders Brown and Hood to build the Turbinia.
Testing took place on the Tyne, at North Shields, from White Hill Point (where the cruise ships berth today).
Parsons, born in London in 1854, demonstrated the Turbinia to the Admiralty in 1897. Some adjustments were needed and once finessed, the Turbinia could sail at up to 35 knots, much faster than those powered by steam piston engines.
Martin’s talk will include how marine steam turbines were then used to power Royal Navy vessels, including destroyers and the HMS Dreadnought (an early 20th century battleship), as well as iconic ocean-going liners such as the Mauretania, Lusitania and later the QE 2. The Titanic had both a marine steam turbine and a steam piston engine.
Generally, ships that needed speed were powered by marine steam turbine until oil prices soared and it became cheaper to have diesel engines.
The Turbinia can now be seen at the Discovery Museum in Newcastle. While it was being prepared for the museum, Martin, who by then was lecturing at the Marine College in South Shields, responded to a call for someone to help repair the guard rail wires. This needed to be done in a certain way – ‘the Liverpool splice’ – which Martin was familiar with from his early training at Plymouth School of Navigation. Martin was happy to oblige and spent a day splicing wires to help prepare the vessel for her current berth at the Discovery Museum.