Image of the Month

Here we see Sir William Hawthorne (1913-2011), Master of Churchill College from 1968-1983 and Professor of Applied Thermodynamics and head of the Engineering Department at Cambridge, balancing on what appears to be a large rubber dinghy, but what was actually a brilliantly simple way of easing the oil crisis.

In his early years in the 1940s, Hawthorne worked on jet engine design at Farnborough, Power Jets Limited and the British Air Commission in Washington. He also had a strong interest in energy use, and the oil shortages caused by the Suez Crisis turned his attention to the problems of transporting fuel. Because of events in Suez, petrol was rationed as there were not enough tankers to keep up normal supplies from the Persian Gulf by the Cape route, instead of the much shorter Suez Canal route. At the end of 1956, Hawthorne developed an idea for using plastic vessels, made of rubberised cotton dinghy fabric, as oil barges, to be filled with oil and towed by existing tankers. When empty, the vessels could be rolled up and returned more quickly, even flown back to the source of supply. These plastic vessels were christened Dracones, or sea serpents.

In this photograph, Hawthorne is standing on a later and larger version of the Dracones, named Draconella, which was launched in April 1957. Dracone Developments Ltd was formed in August 1957, and 20 Dracones were built in the first two and a half years, in sizes ranging from 15 to 320 tons, and over 2000 tons of petroleum products were transported by Dracones in regular operation to the Isle of Wight. Dracones are still in use today, for purposes ranging from clearing oil slicks to forming a protective ring round shipping.