Chapter 21
Salvage
For the flour we carried the trip has not been very urgent and it was all right. Our trip has been interrupted by an accident in the navigational route in Austria, where the river-bed is the narrowest. After peaking the water level began to go down, and one of our Diesel-electric tugs succeeded in towing a barge aground. That tug has been one of the two built in the thirties on a quite unique concept.
Mechanical propulsion of ships, after the era of rowing galleys and sailing ships, began with propeller screws mounted on shafts parallel with the central line of the hull. At first they used to be made of wood and, to give them strength, they resembled transporting spirals. Fortunately, the ship on her maiden voyage crashed her screw to the pier and only a third of the blade-surface remained. Its performance suddenly grew. So the screw of present-day propulsion has been invented. There was another road to develop propulsion: the paddle-wheel. It was sturdy and, after the invention of controlled blades, its efficiency surpassed that of the screw. The blades of a controlled paddle-wheel are not simply mounted radially. They are suspended from their turning points and are also connected to an out-of-centre wheel that regulates their positions in a way that they be always submerging vertically, ensuring the maximum boost to the hull.
Different waterways determine different kinds of propulsion. On the seas paddle-wheels had a short career, as high waves have a bad effect on them. But river-boats with steam-engines preserved this design for long. Paddle-wheels are easily coupled with slow-motion engines, screws are fit to a higher speed. It means, the kind of the engine has always determined the kind of propulsion. The main dilemma has been: how to raise the efficiency of steam-engines to the level of Diesel engines, or how to put more efficient screws under the stern of Diesel-driven ships.
With limited navigational depth on the Danube the latter has its natural upper limit, although inventive engineers found some ways of getting around the problem. The use of Kort-rings has made screws virtually bigger: a screw of 6 feet in diameter gave a boost of a 7-and-a-half-foot ordinary one. Also, the rules of hydrodynamics allowed to place screws in tunnels, i.e. a foot of the screw was above water level. As it began to turn, the pressure behind it gradually filled the empty place with water, and the screw at higher speeds was working in normal conditions.
There was the other way: to improve the efficiency of the engine on paddle-wheelers. This was the unique concept, that had its roots on German submarines: Diesel-generators and electric propulsion motors. The same solution had been used in two Hungarian-built paddle-wheeler river tugs, called Baross and Széchenyi. Here you can read about the former one.
In the case of the above mentioned tug-boat the three 400-HP Diesel engines have been coupled to DC-generators and the current has driven a big slow-motion electric motor mounted on the shaft of the paddle-wheels. In that way the overall efficiency has grown by 50 percent.
But it was not all so fine. First, maintenance time – and costs – grew 100 percent. Second, the navigability of a paddle-wheeler is worse than that of screw-driven tugs. A double-screw tug can go even to the side, by turning one screw fore and the other aft. A paddle-wheeler must always float above the selected place and let the current take her down. On a downriver route such a tug is like a bullet shot out of a gun. If the original aiming has been incorrect, it would not follow the right route and has to repeat the manoeuvre.
The ebbing river has made salvage harder every minute. The commander of the tug tried to draw the barge off, but the hull has been opened and one of the holds took in water. There remained only one way, to rent lighters and to instruct all the hands of the two company ships nearby – the tug and our freighter – to help in unloading freight in the damaged hold (and possibly others) until the barge would come off the ground.
It was an unpleasant job to go into the holds of the barge and shovelling the red material – raw material for chemical processes – into containers to be lifted out by a floating crane. The damaged hold has solved part of the problem gradually: water washed the load out through the leak.
The salvage we finished in one day by emptying two of the four holds and taking out as much as possible from the damaged one.
My trip on the freighter ended in June and, as I have visited my family, but found only my father at home, being all the others on holiday in the village with aunt Elizabeth, I decided to spend the Sunday on the boat. She was laid on the embankment at company headquarters in the very centre of the city, opposite the castle on the other bank. I took my suit on and went to see a girl in the village where Agnes has been living. She was her fiend and was a medical student. She agreed to come with me to dance at the Youth Park.
It was the only time I visited that popular place for the young. It was situated at the foot of Castle Hill near the Chain Bridge. For unrests after a short time of prosperity it will have been closed forever. But I write now about events before those unrests.
A dance band was playing, and in the fine weather under the late afternoon sunshine we were dancing in the multitude of young pairs.
That girl I had known for years, and she had been my partner for chats together with Agnes on the suburban train. Her face was speckled and not very beautiful when she was small, but as she grew up her appearance became nice. I have never had with her any programs, except that day. Looking for Agnes, I found her instead and she was ready to come with me.
It was pleasant to be with her. She talked about her study at the University of Medical Sciences, and was listening with admiration to my narratives about my trips. There were no alcoholic drinks, we sipped a kind of juice that was hard to tell what it was, but we suddenly said simultaneously: "juice from canned pears.” It has been sold as peach juice.
I accompanied her to the tram that has taken the place of our suburban train at the beginning of that year. The construction of the country’s first highway had cut the line of the train in two, and only the inner section has been left intact, with an ordinary tram on it.
The next day Uncle Louis assigned me on a two-day trip on our first hydrofoil. It has been a specimen of the smaller from the two Soviet types. Our company has purchased two pieces of that series "Rocket”.
When my family caught the news that it would be my last trip that year, everybody gave his or her order on goods to acquire in Vienna. It was the main reason, why that time I did not go to Frau M., I had to buy things at the source. My sister has been happy with the sweater I took her, and my aunt was also satisfied with the small Japanese transistor radio. Later she became fed up with it and gave it to me after my marriage.
The hydrofoil gave me no work to do, the engineer of it would not let anybody touch anything. It has been a true Russian design, but of the better type. Its 1,200-HP main engine had a life of only 500 hours, no wonder: it has been the same engine used in T-72 tanks.
Another girl. She was returning to the capital from Vienna with her aunt, she was the daughter of a dentist. First, by appearance and my being a would-be engineer, she was inclined to appreciate me, but when my background came to light, she let me down. Of course, no misalliance, please.
The month of July I have spent on practice in one of the capital’s shipyards, together with my fellow-mariners from the university and another student of our year. It has been a quick program, made by modification of the practice-plan, to set aside one month of the four to see also shipbuilding on spot, not only shipping. I have never seen any practice organized in a worse way in my life. The managers responsible for our training were looking at our presence as a burden. If we did not find our own occupation, we could have been sitting all the time in one office, given for our disposal.
Fortunately, we had specialized to that trade, because we had been interested. For this reason, nobody could stop us, and we learned all we could, from the mould loft (a one-to-one drawing board in the attic of the workshop), where the lines of ships were drawn in a natural scale, to the foundry to the screw-chiselling shop.
Our last task has been to paint the waterline on the sea-and-Danube ship "Borsod”. She has been launched one day before we left the yard.