i84 IVl'L'LAR SCIENCE MONTllLl'. 



for the efficiency and reliability of the fleet of 1861-5 and later. But, 

 while the latter has great interest for all as an element of the success of 

 the government in suppressing the southern confederacy, the former is 

 more impressive in its illustration of the application of modern science 

 to the revolutionizing of the construction of the fleet. 



The career of Admiral Melville has thus been one of peculiar 

 interest, and I am glad to be able to review it from the standpoint of 

 the contemporary and professional colleague, of one who entered the 

 navy iji 1861 in the same class and, with commissions of similar date, 

 served for many years in the same corps, and later, professionally, in 

 civil life in such capacities as permitted constant touch with the 

 'chief.'* 



Melville's services to science as an arctic explorer antedated his 

 appointment as chief of bureau. He was appointed 'chief by Mr. 

 Whitney, secretary of the navy, on August 8, 1887, and served sixteen 

 years, the longest period of service on record for a chief of bureau. 

 He immediately took up his task of preparing plans for the machinery 

 of the 'new navy,' gathering about him the ablest available members 

 of his corps. The department had meantime bought plans from foreign 

 builders for the Baltimore, Charleston and Texas; but the work of the 

 new bureau-chief and his corps made it quite unnecessary to experiment 

 in that direction further. The existing fleet is, as a whole, the produc- 

 tion of the engineers and naval architects and ordnance officers of our 

 own Navy Department; the whole system of steam propulsion and its 

 accessories being designed under the direction and supervision of the 

 hero of the Lena Delta. 



Among other innovations and improvements was the installation 

 of the previously almost untried marine water-tube boiler of the general 

 type long familiar on land. John Stevens, a century ago, asserted 

 that the proper construction of a steam-boiler, on the score of safety, was 

 that which divides the steam and water spaces into many small cham- 

 bers, in such manner that the rupture of any one should be in mini- 

 mum degree dangerous.f He invented a water-tube boiler and used 

 it in a screw steamboat, 1804. The famous British engineer, Fair- 

 bairn, asserted the principle: A steam-boiler should be so constructed 

 as not to be liable to explosion. J The modern water- tube boiler of 

 good design combines the principle that a steam-boiler should not be 

 liable to disruptive explosion with that which asserts that, if rupture 

 does occur, it shall be in minimum degree dangerous. It was asserted 

 by the writer, a generation ago, that this class must ultimately displace 

 the older forms of 'shell-boiler' which are liable to destructive ex- 



* See Cassier's Magazine, September, 1903, for an admirable and detailed 

 account of the work of this distinguished oflicer, by his former assistant, Mr. 

 W. M. MeFarland, formerly chief engineer, U. S. N. 



t * History of the Growth of the Steam Engine.' 



+ ' Manual of the Steam-Boiler,' R. H. T. 



