Posted by Andrew Crai-Bennett on September 08, 2002 at 19:26:34 from 213.210.19.72 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: Racundra - comments by Adlard Coles posted by Dan Lind on September 08, 2002 at 15:49:58:
A "hot bulb semi-diesel engine" is now a very rare beast indeed. I can remember two such, one, a Bolnes I think, in the Baltic trader ketch Solveig in the 1960's - it was responsible for wrecking her when it refused duty off the coast of Portugal - and one, an Industrie, in a Dutch klipperaak based here in Woodbridge, which has recently been replaced with a modern engine.
It is, normally, a single cylinder, of fairly heroic proportions, and an equally massive flywheel. Starting the engine involves, first, lighting a blowlamp (I kid you not!) with which you proceed to heat the
"hot bulb" - a large, bulb shaped solid lump of iron at the top of the cylinder. Once this is glowing nicely, you insert a bit of broomstick into the hole in the flywheel prepared for it and wind for all you are worth. If you are fortunate, before apoplexy or prostation sets in, you are rewarded with a tremendous "BANG!", at which point one releases the broomstick instantly, and ducks as it is hurled across the engine room! The engine will continue to BANG at intervals of a second or so, until the throttle is opened and full ahead is indicated, when the bangs become more frequent and forward motion is achieved. Hardened skippers of Baltic traders used to leave their engines on tickover throughout a stay in port, regardless of the BANG!s, to which they were evidently inured, rather than face starting them again.
As you will have guessed, this is basically a simple diesel engine , which does not achieve sufficient compression for true diesel ignition, so the hot bulb helps to heat the air up in the cylinder.
Never common in Britain; more of a Scandinavian and Dutch thing. We had petrol-paraffin engines like the Kelvin E series (lovely) petrol four strokes like GOBLIN's Handy Billy, two stroke petrol engines like PETER DUCK's Stuart Turner and for bigger boats Kelvin's answer to the semi-diesel was their K series - a diesel engine which..wait for this... started on petrol, thereby combining the iffy electrics and dripping carburetters of early marine petrol engines with the intransigent starting, noise and vibration of an early diesel. I can remember one of those, too...
This engine may have been responsible for AR's hernia.