ENGINE ROOM LULLABY (58) - MWM RH 134 SU aboard the Mea Vota

‘It’s a humongous restoration project,’ tells skipper Jens Schrauwen about his tugboat Mea Vota, which he owns since 2018. ‘It had been laid off for years, hadn’t been maintained for years.’ The Mea Vota, built in 1923 by the Arnhemsche Steam Slipway Company as the Gelria II, is a beautiful boat. But the pièce de resistance is the engine, a MWM RH 134 SU of 330 hp at 500 revs. That it’s directly reversible, doesn’t make it special by itself. That the reversing mechanism is visible on top of the engine, however does. ‘We lift up the push rods, then we shift the camshaft sideways and then we put the push rods back. At the front end of the engine, there’s a sort of gear that runs on top of the cylinders.’ Of course we’re shown the reversing from multiple angles. Afterwards, we go sailing in the harbor of Dinteloord, where skipper Schrauwen demonstrates what the engine can do and how manoeuvrable the boat is. But not everybody is happy with that. 00:00 Intro 00:47 About the engine 02:16 Pre-pumping oil 05:05 Cranking the flywheel 06:19 Lubing cylinder valves 07:05 Opening air bottle 07:21 Starting the engine 07:53 Reversing mechanism 09:45 Sailing away 10:56 About the Mea Vota 1 11:54 Manoeuvres 12:37 About the Mea Vota 2 13:33 Confrontation 15:45 Ship’s horn