Starting of the Naval Diesel-Electric Propulsion. The Vandal

Abstract

Until the advent of diesel engines, electric propulsion craft needed the energy stored in batteries (primary or secondary) fitted on board. That was the beginning of electric propulsion of ships. Their limitations were, like earlier today, the power and battery capacity restricting its usefulness as an energy source for propulsion of merchant ships. In the early twentieth century are starting to get on board diesel engines a technological revolution, but these first units were not reversible machines. Thus arises as a solution to this critical operational limitation, the first vessel with diesel-electric propulsion, the “Vandal”, followed by another twin hull ship, the “Sarmart”, also with diesel-electric propulsion, but
with a different propulsion plant design.
This paper reviews the pioneering, yet little known, carried out in a river tanker early twentieth century history of the kind of widespread naval propulsion for large cruise ships of the early twenty-first century.