PART 2 ORIANA AND CANBERRA EQUALS TO THE ORIENT
P&O’s superliner Canberra was ordered from Harland & Wolff, Belfast on 20 December 1956 and, at 45,270grt, was slightly larger than Oriana (see SM, Feb). Initial designs for the ship were supposedly based on an enlarged Arcadia/Iberia type ship. However, a young naval architect at P&O Line, John West, argued that something very different would have to be done if the company’s £15 million investment was to succeed.
As Vladimir Yourkevitch had done with the French Line and Normandie of the 1930s, West swept away previously accepted practices and came up with a masterpiece: Canberra. Sleek, streamlined and imposing, she was the opposite of Oriana’s massive blockhouse, and was even dubbed ‘The Ship that Shapes the Future’. But she was undoubtedly flawed, and perhaps not quite the masterpiece that she looked.
West had chosen to with a turboelectric powerplant, rather than geared diesels. Turbines drove alternators, with the emanating electricity being used to run propulsion motors connected to the shaftlines. This concept afforded great flexibility in the placement of the various components, such as the boilers, turbo-alternators and propulsion motors. The machinery was pushed right aft, freeing up the middle of the ship for optimising the passenger accommodation. The three boilers were placed above the shaftlines, with the turbo-alternators and propulsion motors ranged within the next two forward compartments.
