ABSTRACT
Parsons had other uses for his turbine besides generating electricity and this he demonstrated in a most spectacular way. In 1897 a great naval review was being held at Spithead to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee when a 44-ton boat appeared from nowhere and sped at 34 knots between the lines of warships. There was nothing afloat fast enough to catch it and, as someone has said, "by the time it got to the end of the line every ship in the fleet was obsolete." The little boat was Parsons' Turbinia. He had chosen this dramatic way of showing the world that the turbine offered a way of driving ships with which no existing type of engine could compete. The Navy took it up quite quickly and in 1904 the Cunard Company ordered turbines developing 70,000 h.p. for their new liner the Mauretania. The Queen Mary, launched in 1936, had turbines which developed over i6o,000 h.p.
