Betty B.
speaker
3,598 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 2 Jul
Betty B.’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Columbus made his famous journey with sails.
This ship is driven by turbines that equal the power of 100,000 horses all working at once.
Take out your watch and feel its weight.
Mine weighs five ounces.
This ship weighs 56,000 tons and every bit of it is built like a watch.
I went in an elevator with the chief engineer down through story after story of the marvelous machinery and put my hands on the steel wheel that controls the mighty force
speeding the majestic through the waves faster than a race-horse can trot we are making twenty-five miles an hour as i write and our possible speed is thirty or more still with a twist of the wrist i could stop the ship and with another twist start it going the captain on the bridge has a thought and the touch of a button will turn this machinery as he directs the majestic is now cutting the billows at a mile every two minutes a rate that would take away the breath of columbus
He sailed from the Canary Islands to the West Indies in 33 days.
The first time I crossed the Atlantic to Europe, I took the largest steamer afloat.
That was in my salad days before my red mustache had sprouted.
We were eight days going from New York to Liverpool.
Today, about the same trip has been made by airplane in 24 hours, while the Majestic has made the passage between New York and Cherbourg in five days, six hours, and 13 minutes.
were i the witch of endor i would raise the spirit of columbus as she called for that of samuel for saul and i venture that columbus when he saw the wonders surrounding him on this great ship would be more disquieted than was that old prophet of israel i should like to show columbus what makes the force that drives the majestic it is a power that was unknown until almost four hundred years after the santa maria was launched it is oil drawn from the rocky bowels of old mother earth
We have 8,000 tons of it aboard and are burning more than 30 tons every hour or half ton a minute.
The oil is sprayed into the furnaces and the turning of a screw starts the flow.
If the ship were fueled like the old-style 20th century steamer, it would need 500 additional men to shovel in the coal and dump out the ashes.
Fuel oil is now used on all the great liners.
It propels ships of our Navy from submarines to super dreadnoughts.
and it is the need of such oil that is causing the struggle between the powers for the control of the petroleum fields of the world.
I should like to see the ghost of Columbus looking at the magic lights on this steamer.
Showing 41–60 of 3,598 · page 3 of 180
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