Nortern Star

[John Arton]

Just a note.
Yesterday was the day the Northern Star left the Tyne 50 yrs ago to commence her hand-over trials. She only lasted around 13 yrs I believe.
rgds
Capt. John Arton (ret'd)

[Tony Wilding]

Very unusual to have so short a life, and not bought by another company. a nice looking ship,

[happy daze john in oz]

A totaly noe concept as to design with the engines fitted at the rear. Along with Southern cross did the Oz run for a number of years as migrant ship. Maybe she was before her time in concept?

[Tony Frost]

A totaly noe concept as to design with the engines fitted at the rear. Along with Southern cross did the Oz run for a number of years as migrant ship. Maybe she was before her time in concept?

Wrong engines?(lots of machanical problems,fuel prices)and end of the £10 POM

[Peter F Chard]

The problem was the boilers -- it was a non stop battle to keep the generating and superheat tube passes clear of ' slagging ' -- vanadium pentoxide was the main culprit. Cheers Peter in NZ.

[Tony Wilding]

Re the last post, what causes that to happen, were the boilers a bad design, ? would have thought by then boiler design would be perfect, been around a long time.

[John Arton]

Firstly apologies for my mis spelling of her name in the orginal post.
Its 50 yrs ago today that the Northern Star left the Tyne to begin her career, yet she almost never made it. Just after dropping her tugs and approaching the mouth of the Tyne a 40 knot wind blew up and she was pushed to within 150ft of the South Pier. Fortunatley the tugs were near enough to go to her assistance and managed to hold her off the piers and get her back mid-river.
Not a very good start to her life was it.
rgds
Capt. John Arton (ret'd)

[Peter F Chard]

There was nothing wrong with the boilers -- they were B&W '' Selectable Superheat " boilers and the ship had two of them. Output, from memory was 125000 lbs of steam per hour at 600 psi and superheated to 605 Farenheit. The problem was the gas passages between the tubes were very small and the fuel used was not the best -- high sulphur and vanadium content so slagging was a constant problem. At every port visited the engineers and engine room crew would don asbestos suits and get inside the idle boiler with lances, water blasters, chisels and anything else to chip away at this slag -- it was as hard as concrete. At the next port the other boiler would receive the same treatment, all this happened with the refractory lining glowing a dull red heat !! Once the gas passages slagged up it was diffilcult to balance the air requirements needed to generate enough steam to maintain our speed, trying to force things along resulted in a build up of pressure inside the furnaces and the boilers would start shake and jump around so much that it could be felt all over the ship -- no one thought of asking the passengers what they thought this shaking about was ! On my last trip we steamed from Lisbon to Southampton with one boiler shut down and the other one with the superheat tube banks isolated -- running steam turbines on wet steam is asking for trouble but we got away with it. But otherwise the engine room was an engineers delight, in fact she had the first multi stage fresh water maker made by Weirs to go into a ship -- this plant could produce 150 tonnes of fresh water daily, with a purity of less than 2 parts per million of nasties. Hope this is of interest to someone, cheers Peter in NZ.

[Captain Kong]

My younger brother sailed home from Sydney on the Northern Star.
He was on the Australian Coast for three years and then got a job on a powder boat, Wongala, he had been out of work for a while , no jobs with the union boats, so he joined the Wongala, a Sailing ship that went down off Sydney Heads and reappeared off the NZ Coast 12 days later, he stuck it for six months and then went back to the Union and they told him No Chance, you have been working on a Non Union Ship so you are finished.
He eventually got a Pier Head jump as AB on the Northern Star and came home.
Cheers
Brian
This is the Wongala, she was wrecked on Bets Reef near Thursday Island.

[Ivan Cloherty]

My younger brother sailed home from Sydney on the Northern Star.
He was on the Australian Coast for three years and then got a job on a powder boat, Wongala, he had been out of work for a while , no jobs with the union boats, so he joined the Wongala, a Sailing ship that went down off Sydney Heads and reappeared off the NZ Coast 12 days later, he stuck it for six months and then went back to the Union and they told him No Chance, you have been working on a Non Union Ship so you are finished.
He eventually got a Pier Head jump as AB on the Northern Star and came home.
Cheers
Brian
This is the Wongala, she was wrecked on Bets Reef near Thursday Island.

Bet she was hard work, as would have (presumably) only a small crew.

Unions and their inflexibility have a lot to answer for, in the past and currently