Sausages of Oil

Oil tankers of the future may be giant descendants of sausage skins. Two years ago Engineering Professor William Rede Hawthorne of Britain's Cambridge University got empty sausage skins from his butcher, filled them with alcohol, tied the ends and towed them in the laboratory's wave tank. The alcohol sausages rode the waves so valiantly that he got financial backing from Esso Petroleum Co., Ltd. to build and test good-sized flexible barges.

Last week the professor demonstrated, in Southampton Water, his latest barge, which he calls a "Dracone," from a Greek word for serpent. It is 100 ft. long, 5 ft. in diameter, and made of 200 Ibs. of strong nylon fabric and about a ton of synthetic rubber. Partially filled to keep the skin relaxed, it carries 10,000 gallons of fluid and slips through the water like a boneless whale with a flattish top 18 in. above the surface.

Dracones have proved to be surprisingly seaworthy. A 67-ft. model was towed out into a full gale and showed no signs of distress, although the tug that towed it had to run for shelter. When making a sharp turn, a Dracone does not swing like a ship; its fabric forms a kink that moves from bow to stern.

The economic advantages of Dracones are their cheapness (about $5,600 for the 100-ft. job) and the fact that they can be pumped dry at the end of a voyage, rolled up, and shipped back to a source of oil as cargo of a small towing vessel.

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