Before that was there ever a ship powerful enough that it was able to ride on rather than in the water? I believe this is basically impossible for any sail powered vessel (large, heavy keel neccesary to counter the force of the sail). But did any early reciprocating steam vessel have a high enough power to weight ratio to ‘break the water barrior’ as it were?
Do you have info that the Turbina was able to plane? I’m not fully convinced. This site gives the following specs:
LOA: 100’
Beam: 9’
Power: 2000hp
Weight: 44.5 tons
Claimed speed: 35 kts
Weight per HP: 49 lbs
This looks like a powerful and fast vessel with a displacement hull. With 49lbs/hp, planing would likely require a hull carefully designed for that role.
The PBS series Warship (where I first heard of it) had a lot of footage of it and it looked like it was. Maybe not though.
John Maxtone-Graham’s The Only Way to Cross, an invaluable and vivid book about the early days of the ocean liners, has a few pages on Parsons and two pictures of the Turbinia zipping her way across the startled ships of the Spithead revue that historic summer day in 1897; one the top one of the page you linked to, and the other one of her going through the middle of the fleet. In neither case is she ‘planing’ as you describe it, and Maxtone-Graham never says that she could. However, he does say that “To prevent excessive trim, the underwater aft surfaces were flat, a major innovation in its day.”
He had a fun time buzzing around; the dory launch he was towing broke loose and caroomed into a French yacht, to general merriment; he gave a ride to the owner of the White Star Line, Thomas Ismay, and his young son Bruce, who would later become for a time the most infamous shipwreck survivor ever; and he ended up being summoned for an audience with Kaiser Wilhelm’s brother, Prince Henry of Prussia.
Maxtone-Graham describes the Ismays as being nervous at moving over the water at nearly 40 miles per hour, so that tells you how fast it could go. I’m not a sailor or physicist, so I can’t answer your question, but it seems like it wouldn’t need to leave the water–besides, wouldn’t the resulting cavitation render the screws useless and slow it down anyway?
It’s a fantastic book and goes into the design of the Mauritania and Olympic class of ships, as well as the French greyhounds and Germanic muscle ships.
Well, some might argue about that.
The “E” scow and the “A” scow sail boats will most definitely plane and many other sail boats as well. And were doing it in early 1908 and before. They won’t plane indefinitely but they will definitely plane.
Been on them doing it…
I’m not sure what the exact forensic definition of planing off is, but anyone who’s owned a powerboat knows that its the point where you apply enough throttle that the hull stops pushing or displacing the majority of the water out of its way but instead lifts up and the majority of the hull rides on the surface of the water.
At this point you can back off the throttle and still remain planed, i.e. not sink back below the surface. The props, being below the hull, remain totally immersed the whole time.
A lot of factors would be involved, weight, surface area, power, water density. This is kind of a powerboat thing, sailboats aren’t designed and, more importantly, don’t need to do this.
Lots of small sailboats will plane, including my relatively tame-looking DaySailer I. A few will even raise the hulls out of the water entirely, and ride on underwater hydrofoils.
Any conventional boat that exceeds its hull speed will surf. All else being equal, the length of the hull at the waterline determines its hull speed. To calculate the hull speed in knots, the square root of the waterline (in feet) is multiplied by 1.34.
Many mono-hull sailboats, most small powerboats and most multi-hulled sailboats can surf without much difficulty. The longer hulls of most ships makes true surfing impractical, although warships are frequently capable of exceeding their hull speed by a small margin. USN ARLEIGH BURKE-class destroyers, for instance, have a waterline length of 466’, which gives a hull speed of about 28.9 knots. However, that class of vessel has a top speed of 31 knots. On the other hand, the USS ENTERPRISE’s hull speed would be somewhere around 43 knots, somewhat higher than her official top speed of 30[ish] knots.
Windsurfers can also plane. Although the OP is right that sailboats with displacement hulls and heavy keels will generally not plane (although I’m told you can just about do it with a Rhodes 19 with a keel).
Note that Cerowyn’s formula (rule of thumb) really only applies to displacement hulls. For planing hulls such as windsurfers, the formula is not applicable. Here, for example, is a photo of someone windsurfing at 44 knots – using the displacement hull formula, you’d figure a 10 or 12 foot windsurfer could barely break jogging speed.
The hull speed is merely the limit that a vessel needs to surf if it’s going to go faster. A windsurfer is, pretty much by definition, surfing. The draught of warships drops noticeably as they get near their top speed; the hulls are beginning to surf.