Marine Engines
Maudslay’s Lambeth works began to specialize in the production of marine steam engines. The type of engine he used for ships was a side-lever design, in which a beam was mounted alongside the cylinder. This saved on height in the cramped engine rooms of steamers. His first marine engine was built in 1815, of 17 h.p., and fitted to a Thames steamer named the Richmond. In 1823 a Maudslay engine powered the Lightning, the first steam-powered vessel to be commissioned by the Royal Navy. In 1829 a side-lever engine of 400 h.p. completed for HMS Dee was the largest marine engine existing at that time.
The marine engine works became a partnership between Maudslay, his son Joseph, and Joshua Field, as Maudslay, Sons and Field.
In 1838, after Maudslay's death, the Lambeth works supplied a 750 h.p. engine for Isambard Kingdom Brunel's famous SS Great Western, the first transatlantic steamship. They patented a double cylinder direct acting engine in 1839. They introduced some of the earliest screw propulsion units for ships, including one for the first Admiralty screw steamship, HMS Rattler, in 1841. By 1850 the firm had supplied more than two hundred vessels with steam engines, though the firm's dominance was being challenged by John Penn's trunk engine design.
Read more about this topic: Henry Maudslay
Famous quotes containing the words marine and/or engines:
“God has a hard-on for a Marine because we kill everything we see. He plays His game, we play ours.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)
“America is like one of those old-fashioned six-cylinder truck engines that can be missing two sparkplugs and have a broken flywheel and have a crankshaft that’s 5000 millimeters off fitting properly, and two bad ball-bearings, and still runs. We’re in that kind of situation. We can have substantial parts of the population committing suicide, and still run and look fairly good.”
—Thomas McGuane (b. 1939)