SS Agamemnon (1865)
.jpg)
Agamemnon
|
|
| History | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Agamemnon |
| Owner: | Ocean Steam Ship Co |
| Operator: | Alfred Holt Ltd |
| Port of registry: |  |
| Route: | Liverpool to China and the Far East |
| Builder: | Scotts of Greenock, Renfrewshire |
| Yard number: | 116 |
| Launched: | 6 October 1865 |
| Fate: | scrapped 1898 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | cargo and passenger steamer |
| Tonnage: | |
| Length: | 309.3 ft (94.3 m) |
| Beam: | 38.8 ft (11.8 m) |
| Depth: | 20.6 ft (6.3 m) |
| Installed power: | 300 hp |
| Propulsion: |
|
| Sail plan: | 3-masted barque |
| Speed: | 10 knots (19 km/h) |
SS Agamemnon was one of the first successful long-distance merchant steamships. She was built in 1865 to trade between Britain and China, and competed with tea clippers before and after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. She brought together three improvements in steamship design: higher boiler pressure, an efficient and compact compound steam engine, and a hull form with modest power requirements.
Before Agamemnon, steamships were not a practical commercial option for trade between Britain and the Far East. The amount of coal that they needed to carry left little space for cargo. Agamemnon could steam at 10 knots (19 km/h), consuming only 20 tons of coal a day. This was substantially less than other ships of the time – a saving of between 23 and 14 tons per day was achieved. This enabled her to steam to China with a coaling stop at Mauritius on the outward and return journey.
Agamemnon was the first of three sister ships, the others being Achilles (1866) and Ajax (1867). Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company of Greenock, Renfrewshire built the three ships for Alfred and Phillip Holt's Ocean Steam Ship Company, later called the Blue Funnel Line. Each was 2,270 GRT and 1,550 NRT. Overall length was 309 feet (94 m) and beam 38 feet (12 m).
Agamemnon (and her sister ships) combined three key features.
The first was a higher boiler pressure than was normally used on British merchant ships. Alfred Holt had experimented with a boiler pressure of 60 psi in the Cleator, a ship he used as a floating testbed. Holt overcame the Board of Trade's objections to boiler pressures above 25 psi in seagoing vessels.
...
Wikipedia