The launch took place on May 19, 1947 and in April 1948 the ship under construction number 686 was handed over to the British shipping company Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company (a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell) in London . She was one of the last "3-12" series vessels of this type of tanker developed in the mid-1930s by John Lamb, Head of Technical Inspection at Royal Dutch Shell . Unlike its numerous sister ships , it was equipped with a diesel-electric drive when it was completed and was used in transatlantic liner traffic. In 1951, a diesel engine was replaced by a 920 kW gas turbine for testing purposes. In 1956, the entire drive was replaced by a single 4270 kW gas turbine with a reduction gear. After her modifications, she continued to operate regularly and laid up on the River Blackwater on June 12, 1960 . At the beginning of May 1962 she left this again in the direction of Blyth , where she was finally canceled on August 5th.
Gas turbine drive
John Lamb designed the machine area for operation with heavy fuel oil during the new building and continued to plan the conversion to the CODLAG drive (COmbined DieseleLectric And Gas). The first conversion in November 1951 took place with a gas turbine unit designed by B. E. G. Forsling from British Thomson-Houston from Rugby. With this, the Auris made its first trip with the new drive from the Tyne to Port Arthur in Texas in October of that year . This drive was then operated without problems for 20,150 hours until the next modification in 1956. Among other things, in March 1952 the world's first voyage of a cargo ship with exclusive gas turbine propulsion from Plymouth to Curacao was carried out, with an average speed of 7.2 knots.
In 1958/59, a completely new ship propulsion system, consisting of a gas turbine with 5575 hp that acted on a reduction gear, was installed at the Cammell Laird shipyard . In order to implement the installation of the large air inlets, the aft deck superstructures had to be largely rebuilt and provided with a considerably larger chimney. The reversible hydraulic gear set from Pametrada (Parsons and Marine Engineering Turbine Research and Development Association), a development company of the British Shipbuilding Industry Association, worked in advance via a hydraulic clutch, while in reverse operation it worked via a also hydraulically operated torque converter . An additional hydraulically operated gear clutch was installed to prevent the approximately six percent slip in advance during the trip. Although this conversion increased the speed to 14 knots, it quickly became clear that the conversion was not a success in an economic sense. Contrary to what Lamb predicted, the high operating costs (fuel consumption: 247 g / PSh) were not offset by savings in the maintenance of the system. However, evidence was provided that trouble-free and reliable operation of such a system was possible.
