RMS Arlanza (1912)
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| History | |
|---|---|
 United Kingdom
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| Name: |
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| Owner: |
 Royal Mail Steam Packet Co
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| Operator: |
 Royal Navy (1915–20) |
| Port of registry: |
 Belfast
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| Route: | Southampton – Rio de Janeiro – Montevideo – Buenos Aires |
| Builder: | Harland and Wolff, Belfast |
| Yard number: | 415 |
| Launched: | 23 November 1911 |
| Completed: | 8 June 1912 |
| Commissioned: | 24 April 1915 |
| Decommissioned: | April 1920 |
| Maiden voyage: | 21 June 1912 |
| In service: | September 1912 |
| Out of service: | April 1915 |
| In service: | July 1920 |
| Out of service: | August 1938 |
| Identification: |
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| Fate: | Scrapped 1938 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | A-series |
| Type: |
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| Tonnage: | |
| Length: | |
| Beam: | 65.3 ft (19.9 m) |
| Depth: | 33.3 ft (10.1 m) |
| Installed power: | 14,000 ihp (10,440 kW) |
| Propulsion: | 2 × triple-expansion engines, 1 × low-pressure steam turbine, 3 × screws |
| Speed: | 17 knots (31 km/h) |
| Capacity: |
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| Armament: |
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| Notes: | |
RMS Arlanza was a 14,622 GRT ocean liner of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. She was built in Ireland in 1912 for RMSP's scheduled route between England and South America. She was a Royal Navy armed merchant cruiser from 1915 until 1920. She returned to civilian liner service in 1920 and was scrapped in England in 1938.
Owen Philipps had become Chairman of RMSP in 1903, and over the next five years had introduced five new, larger ships on the company's premier route between Southampton and the east coast of South America. The new ships came to be called the "A-series", as each had a name beginning with that letter.
Philipps was interested in using steam turbines in the "A-series", and discussed this with Charles Parsons who invented the turbine. But when the RMSP ordered the first member of the series, RMS Aragon, turbines were new to merchant shipping and almost untried. She and the next four "A-series" ships were therefore ordered with a pair of conventional quadruple-expansion engines powering a pair of screws.
After the fifth ship, RMS Asturias, was completed in 1908, it was clear that fuel consumption by steam turbines tended to be high, propellers driven directly by turbines were too fast for merchant service, and turbines running slowly enough to give a slow propeller speed for merchant service were inefficient. Reduction gearing was therefore being applied to allow turbines to run efficiently at high speed but drive propellers at low speed.
After Asturias another four "A-series" liners were built to a revised and enlarged design, with three screws instead of two. Each of the two outer screws was driven by a four-cylinder triple-expansion engine. The middle screw was driven by a low-pressure steam turbine, driven by exhaust steam from the low-pressure cylinders of the two reciprocating engines.
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