Welding
Developments in Vickers Armstrong Naval Yard.
Abstracts
from C F Morris book – Origins –Orient and Oriana.
Welding
had advanced considerably during the 1939 –45 World War and non more so than
at Vickers where the first British submarine HMS Tiptoe had been fully
welded, mainly by manual metal arc welding using the then new ‘S’ grade
steel. The Orient management in the post war years were anxious to adopt any new
building method which could improve their vessels and this included the rapidly
changing welding methods and other techniques.
In the Orcades (1948), the vertical keel plate
and side girders in the double bottom were welded direct to the shell plating
and inner bottom plating, and the butts of the shell plating were welded. The
bossed shell plating seams and butts were welded, as was the bossed framing
direct to the bossed shell framing. The watertight bulkheads, deck girders, deck
plating seams and butts, engine and boiler seating, generator and auxiliary
machinery seats were all welded too. In the Oronsay (1951), in addition
to all the welding which had been done in the Orcades, large areas of the shell
were pre-fabricated with welded seams and butts of the shell plating. These
pre-fabricated parts were then assembled on the building berth and welded
together. The Orsova (1954) was all welded except for the few
fore-and-aft seams of riveted connections as demanded by Lloyd’s. These were
known as ‘crack arresters’,
because some evidence of failure had been noticed in the structure of some
welded ships in which cracks had started. In those days the reasons were a mix
of poor plate material and design methods. However British naval vessels still
require a crack arrester plating around the hull plating to deck to prevent
cracking which can occur in extreme situations as per the South Atlantic in
winter. The Orsova was the first all welded passenger ship in Britain and
possibly the world.
