Orsov (From Daily Echo)

Orsov

2:15pm Friday 28th December 2007 in Historic Ships By Keith Hamilton, Shipping & Heritage Reporter

ORIENT Line's 28,000-ton Orsova is remembered as the first passenger liner in the world with an all-welded hull and the first without a mast.

The liner, costing £5m, was built by Vickers Armstrong at Barrow, and launched on May 4, 1953, the same day that a P&O liner, Arcadia, was launched on the Clyde.

She was the second Orsova in the Orient Line fleet for the Australian service. The first, built by John Brown and Co. on the Clyde, lasted from 1909 to 1936.

Orsova had a single funnel amidships specially rigged to carry radio aerials and halyards which previously would have gone on the mast.

At the top of her funnel was a short black stovepipe which quickly became known as the Welsh hat.

Its purpose was to keep soot and smuts away from the upper decks and it must have worked as the Orient Line used it in other vessels.

She could carry 685 passengers in first-class and 813 in tourist-class. The crew totalled 642 and altogether 275,000 square feet of plastic was used on board.

In March 1958, during a turn-round in Southampton, Orsova was the first ship to use special facilities provided in the number six dry dock. Slots had been cut in the side walls to enable ships to extend their stabiliser fins for inspection and repair.

The liner was withdrawn from service in 1973 and subsequently broken up in Taiwan.