Science: Oil Burner

An ocean liner rounded Sandy Hook and glided up the river that leads toward the cubistic jumble of Manhattan’s skyline. No smoke issued from the two stacks. No soot begrimed the upper deckhouse; the engineer had on a stiff collar; the attendants who stooped among the glinting wheels and thrusting, noiseless pistons of the engine room, tried not to get their cuffs dirty and succeeded. For this was the Gripsholm, arriving on her maiden trip from Gothenburg, Sweden, the first direct oil-burning* liner to cross the Atlantic. The motive power is generated by two double-acting six-cylinder Diesel engines of a new design, the largest ever built, which use crude oil for internal combustion approximately as an “automobile uses gasoline. Each engine drives a propeller. The vessel averaged 17 knots. Its smokestacks are dummies.

*For many years liners have used oil to heat the steam that drives the propeller, but the Gripsholm is the first big boat to be propelled directly by crude oil as a launch is propelled by petrol.