THE NOTED RAFT-BOAT "SILVER WAVE" 109 



ested and ready to "trim ship" or do anything else to 

 help their boat win. 



I have never known a boat to explode her boilers or 

 have any serious accident while racing. 



There have been a few explosions - not while rac- 

 ing- that could only be accounted for by the facts that 

 engineers do sometimes get tired and sleepy and when 

 conditions and tired nature are too harmonious, they do 

 go asleep and the water in the boilers gets too low. 



Steamboat boilers must be built according to United 

 States laws, of the very best material and subjected to 

 very rigid tests by the United States inspection service 

 before they can be used. They must stand a cold water 

 test one hundred and fifty per cent of the steam pres- 

 sure then allowed. A set of boilers to carry one hundred 

 and eighty' pounds steam pressure must stand two hun- 

 dred and seventy pounds water pressure test, and this 

 test is applied at least once a year as long as they are 

 in use. 



If I thought boiler explosions a mystery I could not 

 have slept so comfortably over them for fifty years. 



Search lights or electric lighting had not come into 

 use during the time I was learning the river. We had 

 kerosene lamps and lanterns for lighting and the only 

 thing we had to help the pilots landing at a bad place 

 or hitching into the raft at night was the miserable old 

 "torch basket." This was an iron basket about the size 

 and shape of a ten-quart pail, that was hung on the end 

 of five foot iron handle. 



Using dry pine kindling cut up fine to get a good 

 start we fed the torch with crushed resin a little at a 

 time and then occasionally more wood. 



This made a lot of smoke and some of the time a 



