SS ''Darien'' was a refrigerated cargo ship of the United Fruit Company.

Cammell Laird Cammell Laird is a British shipbuilding company. It was formed from the merger of Laird Brothers of Birkenhead and Johnson Cammell & Co of Sheffield at the turn of the twentieth century. The company also built railway rolling stock until 1929, ...

of Birkenhead, England built her as MV ''La Marea'', completing her in 1924. She had been renamed ''Darien'' by 1930 and had been re-engined from diesel to steam by 1931. The ship was owned by a United Fruit subsidiary, Balboa Shipping Co, Inc, which registered her under the Panamanian flag of convenience. She was still in service in 1945.

Building

''La Marea'' was built as a diesel-electric motor vessel, with four four-cylinder single-acting two-stroke diesel engines. They powered electric generators that supplied current to a single electric propulsion motor rated at 981

NHP Horsepower (hp) is a unit of measurement of power, or the rate at which work is done, usually in reference to the output of engines or motors. There are many different standards and types of horsepower. Two common definitions used today are the ...

that turned a single

propeller A propeller (colloquially often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon ...

shaft. She was equipped with both submarine signalling and wireless.

Rebuilding

By 1930 ''Darien'' had been lengthened by , which increased her gross register tonnage by 592 tons. By 1931 she had been converted from diesel-electric to steam turbo-electric propulsion. Her four diesel engines and four electric generators were replaced with two water-tube boilers and a single

British Thomson-Houston British Thomson-Houston (BTH) was a British engineering and heavy industrial company, based at Rugby, Warwickshire, England, and founded as a subsidiary of the General Electric Company (GE) of Schenectady, New York, United States. They were kno ...

turbo generator A turbo generator is an electric generator connected to the shaft of a steam turbine or gas turbine for the generation of electric power. Large steam-powered turbo generators provide the majority of the world's electricity and are also used b ...

. Her boilers had a combined heating surface of and a working pressure of 400 lb_f/in². The conversion reduced ''Darien''s power output to 839 NHP. ''Darien'' was not United Fruit's first turbo-electric ship. As early as 1921

Workman, Clark and Company Workman, Clark and Company was a shipbuilding company based in Belfast. History The business was established by Frank Workman and George Clark in Belfast in 1879 and incorporated Workman, Clark and Company Limited in 1880. By 1895 it was the UK ...

of Belfast had completed SS ''San Benito'' for Balboa Shipping, again using a BT-H turbo generator and propulsion motor.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Darien 1924 ships Ships built on the River Mersey Steamships of Panama Ships of the United Fruit Company Turbo-electric steamships