Oil tanker

“ The boiler-room, forward the engine-room of the tanker, was a place of many snakelike pipes, valves, sea-plates and oily seepage from the feedtanks. The Seriphus was a converted oil-burner, having been built before crude petroleum was used for steaming purposes. Three double-end Scotch boilers made the steam that drove the tanker’s triple-expansion engine. ”

“ Lars’s tanker looks very different from a freighter. She is long and low and has two houses. One is midships, and the officers’ quarters and wheelhouse are there. The crew lives in the other house at the stern.
Between the two houses the deck is so low that{38} waves often wash over it, and so there has to be a high bridge called a walkaway or a catwalk.
Lars says his particular tanker carries “clean” oil. By that he means oil that has been refined into different grades of gasoline. “Dirty” oil is crude oil just the way it comes out of the wells. Lars is a tankerman and a seaman. ”

“ The vast majority of oil tankers to-day, true to their calling, derive their power from oil, for they burn it under their furnaces, and, therefore, are not liable to those tedious delays so inseparable from the use of coal, and should severe storms beset their passage in Mid-Atlantic, then a little oil pumped overboard will quell the most turbulent sea and permit a safe passage onward. ”

“ With oil, a few pipes were connected with the shore or with a tanker and the ship sucked in its fuel with hardly a man having to lift a finger. Less than half the number of stokers was needed to tend and clean the oil furnaces. Oil could be stowed in spare places in a ship from which it would be impossible to bring coal. ”

“ Machinery pulls the whale up the ramp and onto the deck. There men with knives that look like big hockey sticks cut up the blubber and throw it into vats where the whale oil is boiled out.{49}
Hour after hour the killer boats bring in whales, sometimes forty or fifty a day—or even more! Everybody works day and night, with very little time to eat and sleep. The oil tanks in the factory ship begin to fill up. Now an ordinary tanker comes alongside. The whale oil is pumped from the factory ship to the tanker which delivers it at some big port thousands of miles away. ”

“ The question of transport need not here be considered, for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company owns the entire capital of the British Tanker Co., Ltd. The Company thus has the producing and refining possibilities: 155 the acquired concern of the Tanker Company, together with that of the Petroleum Steamship Co., will suffice to bring its products to the English market, while the large distributing organizations of the British Petroleum Company and the Homelight Oil Company, owning depots all over the country, will offer easy facilities for the distribution of the petroleum products imported. ”

“ Pipelines: crude oil, 26 km; refined products, 547 km
Ports: Piraeus, Thessaloniki
Merchant marine: 954 ships (1,000 GRT or over) totaling 20,544,516 GRT/36,858,545 DWT; includes 15 passenger, 58 short-sea passenger, 2 passenger-cargo, 164 cargo, 18 container, 20 roll-on/roll-off cargo, 27 refrigerated cargo, 182 petroleum, oils, and lubricants (POL) tanker, 10 chemical tanker, 10 liquefied gas, 20 combination ore/oil, 6 specialized tanker, 407 bulk, 15 specialized bulk ”

“ The ease with which oil fuel is handled is remarkable, for vessels of the largest size—that is, those using oil instead of coal for power purposes—could replenish their stores within a few hours at any oil port. In the transport of petroleum by the modern tankers, the taking on board of a full cargo is accomplished in about a single day, thanks to the most improved means of pumping oil from the shore tanks through flexible pipes. ”

“ Owners of tanks connected with the monopoly pipe-lines, with ample storage therein for their own product, are refused transportation from their own wells upon the ground that "their tanks are full," a barefaced and daily demonstrated falsehood. Other producers of petroleum are refused transportation by the pipe-lines, on the plea of want of capacity to carry, and at the same time are informed that their oil will be carried if they will sell it to the ring, "immediate shipment." ”

“ The company always has orders on hand in excess of the quantity of oil at St. Rose, and buys the oil in the Mid-Continent Field for the purpose of filling orders already received from the foreign buyers. The oil in each railroad tank car, however, is not segregated or assigned or destined to any particular cargo or shipment abroad, but is pumped into the large storage tanks, having the capacity of many tank cars, and is held in the tanks until a ship arrives, or until a sufficient quantity of oil is accumulated to make up a cargo. ”

“ The Florio line, the Mediterranean fleet of the Anchor line, and the Mediterranean and New York Steamship Company, handle nearly all of this class of trade.
The tank steamship, for carrying oil in bulk, is an American invention. Ship-builders declared for years that no vessel with a shifting cargo, like oil in bulk, would live through a gale, but an enterprising Yankee demonstrated the fact that petroleum could be244 pumped from the pipe line directly into the hold of a steamship and transported across the ocean in safety. ”

“ It is, in fact, impossible to over-estimate the importance of this up-to-date system of oil transportation in the United States as it exists to-day. To show the impossibility of conducting the present-day American petroleum industry without the use of pipe-lines, let me give a few facts. The large oil-tank cars, which are not unusual sights on our railways, hold, at the maximum, about 25 tons of oil. Excluding California altogether from these illustrations, the half-a-million barrels of oil which are transported daily in the States by pipe-lines would fill over 2,500 tank cars. ”

“ They eliminated the jaded horses, oil-boats, wooden tankage, and slow freights, tedious methods, and questionable practices of handling petroleum, and substituted therefor the stem pump, the iron conduit, the steel tank storage, and systematic and businesslike methods which soon commanded the confidence and respect of all oil-producers. They extended their pipe-lines to practically every producing well and established a transportation system which serves the industry to-day as no other on earth is served. The advantages of the modern pipe-line to the oil-producer are obvious. ”

“ Tankage now existing of a capacity of 6,000,000 barrels cost $2,000,000, and $7,000,000 has been invested in about 2,000 miles of pipe lines connected with the wells. The entire investment for the existing oil production, including purchase money of territory, is something over $100,000,000, which amount cannot be lessened much, if any, for as wells cease to produce new ones have been constantly drilled to take their place. ”

“ Moreover, the use of crude petroleum as fuel, especially for ships, is of the most vital importance in these days of greater competitive plans for expanding world-wide commerce, and establishing the strength and ready efficiency of navies. Great maritime nations must have, for their oil-burning ships, oil-bunkering stations under their own control in all parts of the world where they wish their commerce to dominate, and their navies to protect their interests efficiently. ”

“ From the mouth of the shaft, elevated some fifteen feet above the surface of the ground, the oil either flows or is pumped into an immense vat or tank, and from this is led to another and another, until a large well will have a series of tanks connected like the joints of a rattlesnake's tail. Into the last one is put a faucet, and the oil drawn into barrels is either carried to the local refinery, or in its crude condition is boated to the railway, or to Oil City, and thence down the Alleghany. ”

“ The average tank-steamer carries about two-million gallons of oil in bulk across the Atlantic. In addition to this fleet of steamers, scores of sailing vessels, under charter of the Orient, France, Italy and foreign countries, load cases and barrels of refined-oil for transport to European ports. American wooden-ships are chartered sometimes to convey oil to Japan. Thus Russian competition is met through the instrumentality of pipe-lines to the coast and transportation by water to points many thousand miles away from the wells that produced the oil. ”

“ If a large and steady demand were to set up, it would be easy to construct ships of which the hold should be composed of a series of air-tight compartments, in wrought iron, into which the oil might be turned directly by means of mains, like gas or water mains in our cities, and from which it might be pumped on its arrival in the Thames or in the Mersey. The cost of the delivery of this liquid fuel may thus be expected to be, hereafter, less per ton than that of coal. It only needs the first expense, that of sinking the shaft. ”

“ The world has use, outside the war area, for all the oil that can be produced and transported for a long time after the arrival of peace.
Nevertheless, it may be useful to note a few facts concerning naval development under oil supplies, because such development opens the way to tremendous merchant shipping developments from oil after the war. Without fuel oil the United States government could never have designed for its first line battle cruisers a boiler installation with one hundred and eighty thousand horse-power. ”

“ In the case of very large passenger steamers, such as those of 20 knots and upwards in the Atlantic trade, the saving in cost of fuel is trifling compared with the advantage arising from the greater weight and space available for freight. Adopting a basis of 3 to 2 as between coal consumption and oil consumption, there is an increase of 1000 tons of dead weight cargo in even a 280 medium-sized Atlantic steamer, and a collateral gain of about 100,000 cub. ft. ”

“ Subsequently, owing to the very high price of coal and of wages for firemen, many of the advantages enumerated above induced merchant shipowners to adopt oil in place of coal for high-powered passenger vessels. In low-speed cargo-boats the great economy of internal-combustion engines as compared with steam-engines, makes the advantage of the adoption of oil still more paramount, and the number of these vessels has been largely increased. ”

“ But for three hundred thousand dollars I can go to Sweden, build a smaller vessel than the Narcissus, have her right up to date, with two-thousand-horsepower oil-burning motors in her; and the saving in space due to motor installation, with oil tanks instead of coal bunkers, will enable me to carry fully as much cargo as the Narcissus. Also, I'll burn six tons of crude oil a day to your forty tons of coal a day in the Narcissus. I'll employ eight men less in my crew, and have a cleaner, faster and better ship. The motor ship is the freighter of the future, and you know it. ”

“ To the rear stands a substantial brick-structure, containing the steam-boilers, the electric-light outfit and the huge agitators in which the oil is treated. Big pumps next force the fluid into large vessels, where it is submitted to a variety of special processes, which finally leave it ready for the consumer. A dozen iron-tanks, each holding many thousand barrels, receive and store crude to supply the works for months. As this is piped directly from the wells the largest orders are filled with the utmost dispatch. Nothing is lacking that can ensure superiority. ”

“ Coincident with the building of Diesel engine ships must be the establishment of oil supply stations around the globe, so that steamship owners and shipping agents may contract for oil supplies as they now contract for coal.
The Daniels idea of an oil base in California for the United States is an absurdity. What is wanted for our navy is American commercial oil stations. No navy can use oil in amount comparable with the uses of commerce, and only commerce can sustain oil stations around the globe. ”

“ Taking 25 cars to make up a freight train, it would require fully 100 trains daily to transport the oil that now goes by pipe-line, and inasmuch as it is estimated that the oil on the average is transported overland (or, rather, under-land) 1,000 miles, it would require, approximately, 69 200,000 railroad tank cars to do the daily work in connection with the transport of oil in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains, for the average movement of tank cars is 30 miles daily, and all empty cars must be returned. ”

“ There is no need to look after the consumption, and as a seller you need not make forward contracts as the oil sells itself.” Only what you want is an enormously long purse to be able to snap your fingers at everybody and if people do not want to buy it to-day to be able to say to them: “All right; I will spend a million sterling in making reservoirs and then in the future you will have to pay so much more.” “The great point for the Navy is to get oil from someone who can draw supplies from many spots, because no one spot can be absolutely relied on.” ”

“ Huge iron tanks, capable of holding from twenty to forty thousand barrels of oil, dot the valley quite as thickly as do the blots of ink on a school-boy's first composition, and form storage places for this strange product of earth, when the supply is greater than the demand. ”

“ Tank-steamers ply the Caspian Sea and the Volga, many of the 12railways use the crude-oil for fuel and the supply is practically unlimited. The petroleum-products are carried in these steamers to a point at the mouth of the Volga River called Davit Foot, about four-hundred miles north of Baku and ninety miles from Astrakhan, and transferred into barges. These are towed by small tug-boats to the various distributing points on the Volga, where tanks have been constructed for railway-shipments. ”