APPARATUS FOR EXTINGUISHING FIRES. 487 



was put in service. It did good work, but in winter the hard- 

 ships of the men were so great that few would serve, and the 

 boat was abandoned. This was a forerunner of the fire boats with 

 which so many of the larger cities are now provided. 



Messrs. A. L. Pennock and James Sellers, of Philadelphia, in 

 1818 invented and manufactured the first leather copper-riveted 

 hose used in this country. Burr and Shaw, of Providence, estab- 

 lished a similar business a few years later. 



Boston had no ladder truck until 1820. Having provided 

 many new ladders and hooks, the authorities purchased a rather 

 worn-out express wagon upon which the articles mentioned could 

 be carried to fires more readily. A company was formed to man 

 the same. 



During the early part of the century the departments of the 

 larger towns realized that the private pumps and wells did not 

 form a sufficient water supply, and town pumps and cisterns were 

 placed at convenient intervals about the streets. Instead of fill- 

 ing the engines by means of lines of bucket-passers, it was often 

 possible to pump directly into the machine. This led to pumping 

 direct from the stationary pumps into the fire hose when the 

 pumps were in close proximity to the fire, and soon hose com- 

 panies were formed. A famous company of this kind was formed 

 in Providence. Equipped with a hose carriage and one thousand 

 feet of hose, its members competed for honors with the finest 

 engine companies. This was one of the first hose carriages used. 

 The leading hose of the engines had always been carried on the 

 machines, and this custom was generally continued. Mr. George 

 W. Sheldon, in his history of the New York Volunteer Firemen, 

 states that David J. Hubbs, foreman of one of the companies, 

 introduced the first separate hose carriage in the New York 

 department. It was a very simple device, a reel on the axle 

 between two ordinary wheels. This was known as "Hubbs's 

 Baby." It was either tied behind the engine or pulled by two of 

 the members of the company. 



Up to the year 1820 the fire apparatus in use had improved 

 but little. The larger towns only were provided with engines, 

 and, as has been stated, these were box affairs that were filled by 

 lines of bucket-passers or by stationary pumps. The brakes and 

 pumps, it is true, had been greatly improved, and, indeed, besides 

 the piston-pump engines worked by brakes there was a rotary 

 pump in use, driven by a crank and geared to greater speed by 

 cog wheels, but the engines were limited in their usefulness by 

 the unsatisfactory method employed in supplying them with 

 water. Somewhere between 1819 and 1822, although the exact 

 date is in question, a new era was begun in the method of fight- 

 ing fire. 



