Comments by "Keit Hammleter" (@keithammleter3824) on "The Mauretania's Design Genius | Grand Plans" video.

Mike evidently used a pointer to pint to things he is describing. But the pointer is almost entirely not visible on my screen, which makes following his description difficult at times.
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We have the same problem with our schools in Australia. High school graduation exams used to be set by our universities, so the teachers had to ensure that most students measured up to the externallly set standard. In the 1970's they scrapped that and let the school system set its own exams and therefore the syllabus. Standards have been consequently been going down hill ever since. The quality of teachers has dropped because anybody good now works in industry on much better pay. In high school I gave up technical drawing class because I didn't have good hand coordination skills and the teacher kept failing me and making me do drawings again. At the end of term I was so far behind it was ridiculous. 15 years later I began an engineering degree at university and had to do technical drawing. I consistent got my drawings marked 19 out of 20 while the rest of the class, all just graduated from high school, averaged a much lower mark. The bachelor of engineering course used to be a 3 year course. The universities had to add an additional year in front, as students arrived not knowing stuff that used to be taught in high school. My generation usually only did 7 years of primary and 3 years of high school. Now they do 6 years or primary and 6 years of high school and end up knowing less.
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Note that the reversing turbines are not so much for making the ship go backwards. They are the ship's "brakes" for slowing down and stopping the ship. Note that only the inner 2 propellors had reversing turbines, and they were quite small, so Mauretania's stopping distance was very long, even compared to Titanic.
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Ät 3:22: "the mast is wood as you don't want metal in contact with the aerial." Well, no you don't. But you really don't want wood in contact either - even seasoned wood has a moisture contact, is made of hydrocarbon, and is very lossy to radio frequency energy. In any case, during bad storms, when you really want the radio to work, masts get coated with conductive salt spray. With the high power (10 kw) transmitters used for world-wide communication, the radio energy can burn the wood, which is very undesirable. From the point of view of radio energy absorption, a metal mast is actually better, as it is a solid conductor and not a lossy thing. Further, for the lightning arrestor at the top of the mast to work, there must be a wire running from it down the mast to the hull, to conduct the lightning current safely away. Electrical insulation for the aerial wire(s) was and is provided by "egg" insulators inserted into the wire a few metres from the supporting mast. Egg insulators are made of glazed porcelain, which is an excellent electrical insulator and rapidly sheds water. Egg insulators are around 100 mm long, too small to show properly on a whole-ship drawing and too small to show in most photographs. But if you look carefully at 2:57 just under the corner of the flag, you can see two little dots, which are the egg insulators. Wood provides a degree of flexibility required in masts, with less weight than using steel. A steel mast would require regular inspection for corrosion, which in the top section is not so easy.
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