Learning About Diesel Engines

The recent article about air-cooled engines reminded me of when in 1967, in my early twenties, I was offered the job as Deck Engineer on P&O’s TES Canberra, a 46,000 tonne ocean liner.

- Roy Kington

The job entailed the responsibility for all of the engineering in the ship outside the engine room. As the job would free me from watch-keeping duties in a hot and cramped boiler room, and with the impetuosity and over-confidence of youth, I accepted immediately. Within a day or two I quickly realised that despite a heavy engineering apprenticeship and three years at sea on steam ships I had a very limited capability for the job in hand, the ship being full of leading-edge equipment, some never proved in a marine environment.

This was quickly brought home to me when I was asked to get four lifeboat engines ready for a Lloyds inspection before sailing. The boats had been lowered to deck level and I boarded one with my Indian crew assistant. My only IC engine experience to date was refitting a 1937 Standard eight four-cylinder petrol engine, and seeing a couple of large five-cylinder Allen Diesels being maintained. Still I thought this would be easy, all I had to do was press the start button and they would roar into life.

How do I start it

After I removed the engine enclosure I realised there were neither electrics nor starter handle, indeed there was no way to use one due to a lack of space. There was however, something that looked like a starter motor, and having read some limited instructions it seemed all I had to do was wind the handle and pull a lever. I went through the usual pre-start checks of dipping the oil and then realised there was no water-cooling circuit. I could not work this out but seeing there were three separate cylinders which had fins on them like a motorbike, I assumed the engine could well be air-cooled but I could see no fan, very strange, things were getting deeper and my initial confidence was fast disappearing.