Propeller Shaft

At the aft end of MV Cape Don, below decks, the propeller shaft runs back toward the hull and the water beyond. Photographed looking aft in 2016, the frame shows the actuator assembly mounted on top of the shaft, the mechanism responsible for varying the pitch of the propeller blades without stopping or reversing the main engine. Spare parts are stored on both sides of the shaft, the practical accumulation of a vessel still under active restoration. The propulsion system the shaft belongs to was built for hard service along some of Australia's most remote coastlines. A single 4-blade Kamewa variable-pitch propeller, approximately 2.6 m in diameter and weighing 5 tonnes, was turned by a 5-cylinder 2-stroke Polar diesel producing 2,000 BHP at 250 RPM. Variable pitch gave the vessel precise manoeuvrability at slow speeds, which mattered considerably when working alongside lighthouse landings on exposed WA and NT coastlines where conditions could change without much warning. MV Cape Don was built at the State Dockyard in Newcastle, NSW, for the Commonwealth Lighthouse Service. Her keel was laid in 1961; she was launched on 28 May 1962, completed in January 1963, and made her maiden voyage on 29 March 1963. She was one of three Cape Class vessels designed by the Australian Shipping Board, the others being Cape Moreton and Cape Pillar, and she is the only one of the three still afloat. For 27 years, she serviced lighthouses, lightships, and navigational buoys around the Australian coastline, supplying fuel, stores, and equipment to remote manned stations. She retired from government service in 1990 as lighthouse automation progressively made the supply tender role redundant. By 2016, when this photograph was made, Cape Don was berthed at the former Coal Loader wharf at Balls Head Bay, Waverton, under the care of the Sea Heritage Foundation. The shaft space, spare parts and all, records a vessel that is neither a ruin nor a working ship, but something still in the process of being kept.