ARCTIC S. S. "ROOSEVELT" 365 



The Roosevelt had engines capable of developing 

 one thousand horse-power. They were of the inverted, 

 compound type, driving a single eleven-foot propeller, 

 and steam was supplied by two water-tube boilers and 

 one Scotch boiler. Her sail plan is a light, American, 

 three-masted schooner rig, possessing the advantage 

 of light weight (it is to be remembered that every pound 

 of weight saved in rigging or fitting means a pound of 

 coal in the hold) , and small surface to be forced through 

 a head wind; yet sufficient to materially help the 

 engines in a favouring wind, and to enable the ship 

 to make her way home should her coal be exhausted. 



As to construction: The strength of the hull must 

 be such that it will resist the terrific pressure of the 

 ice-floes, and keep its shape intact until the lifting of 

 the ship bodily releases the pressure; such that if sup- 

 ported at each end only, or in the middle only, or 

 thrown up on the ice and resting upon her bilge, dur- 

 ing the paroxysms of the fioes, she will not be strained 

 or injured; and such that she can ram the ice by the 

 hour when necessary, without injury to seams or 

 fastenings. 



It is a popular fallacy that steel is a suitable material 

 for the construction of an Arctic ship. A steel ship, 

 though structurally strong, is peculiarly vulnerable 

 locally to the ragged, rock-like tongues and comers of 

 heavy Arctic ice. 



The elasticity, toughness and resiliency of thick 

 wooden sides are essential in an Arctic ship; but the 

 wood planking may be steel-sheathed on the outside 

 to enable the ship more easily to slip from the grip 

 of the ice, and the methods of composite ship building 



