S24 On the Principles of Pump-TPork, 



against the numberless casualties that hourly await them> 

 fluctuating cm the ^niiace of the ocean. 



Among these perils by sea, we may justly reckon a leak- 

 ing ship the most dreadful and fatal of all others : here not 

 only one man or a few men perish, but every creature 

 breathing on board the sinking ship, the brave conniiander 

 with the meanest of the crew, are equally devoted to de- 

 struction by such an irresistible catastrophe : if a ship 

 strike against a rock, and is wrecked, some lives may be 

 saved bv tlaating planks and rigging ; if the magazine takes 

 fire, death comes instantaneous, and kills, perhaps, in the 

 most gentle manner: but, in the desperate case of a leaking 

 ship, how slowly does the awful monarch advance, arrayed 

 in all the terrors possible ! How are all their united forces 

 successively applied, and as constantly defeated by the un- 

 abating torrent, which rushing in, and gradually overpower- 

 iucr them, plunges them at last into the bottomless deep! 



Now, as in such a melancholy situation all their hope and 

 expectation of help and safety must be placed in the pump, 

 of what prodigious estimation and consequence docs such a 

 consideration render that machine ! and how much must it 

 import every eonmiandcr of a ship (to whom the lives of his 

 men are committed) to take the utmost care that the ship 

 be supplied with such pumps as will best provide against 

 and ward off those impending dangers ! By any negligence 

 in this respect, he may become guilty of destroying his 

 own life, the lives of his men, and of the ruin and misery of 

 many families. It is therefore his duty to see that his ship 

 be furnished with the best pump that can be procured for 

 evacuating the hold of the water that may at any time get in, 

 with the least force and in the shortest time. 



Here, then, a question of the most serious concern will 

 naturally olTcr itself for discussion ; viz. whether that hy- 

 draulic machine, called a chain-pvmip, now used in ships, 

 be as proper and effectual a construction to evacuate the ship 

 as that of a real pump; I say a real pump, because the chain- 

 pump is not such, — and, properly speaking, it is no pump 

 at all. 



Now, by considering the true nature of a pump, T appre- 

 hend, it will appear that its structure is the best adapted to 

 answer the above purpose of any machine whatsoever, be- 

 cause it will raise just as much water whose weight is equal 

 to the force oi the men employed; and to pretend to any 

 thing more would be absurd. 



I here speak of the just or genuine construction of a 

 puujp, such as it ought to be ; and not such as are in com- 

 mon 



