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Rachel - Launch

LAUNCH AT WEST HARTLEPOOL

Daily Mail, Nov 27/09

Yesterday, Messrs. Wm Gray and Company, Ltd., launched the handsome steel screw steamer Rachel, which they have built for Mr. T. W. Stephens of London.

She will take the highest class in Lloyd’s and is of the following dimensions, viz.: Length over all, 373ft. 6 in.; breadth, 51ft., and depth, 24ft. with extra long bridge, poop, and top -gallant forecastle. The saloon, staterooms, captain’s, officers, and engineers’ rooms, etc., will be fitted up with houses on the bridge deck, and the crew berthed under the topgallant forecastle.

The hull is built with deep bulb angle frames, cellular double bottom, and large after peak ballast tank, eight steam winches, steam steering gear amidships, hand screw gear aft, patent direct steam windlass, shifting boards throughout, stockless anchors, telescopic masts fore and aft rig, boats on deck overhead, and all requirements for a first class cargo steamer.

Triple-expansion engines are being supplied by the Central Marine Engineering Works of the builders, having cylinders 25in., 40 1/2 in., and 67in. diameter, with a piston stroke of 45in., and three large steel boilers for a working pressure of 180lbs. per square inch.

The hull and machinery have been built under the superintendence of Messrs. John Crookston andSon, on behalf of the owners, and the ceremony of naming the steamer Rachel was gracefully performed by Miss S. M. Stephens, of **wne House, Richmond, Surrey.



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