BUOYANCY AND STABILITY OF TROOP TRANSPORTS. 161 



ject in the same way, and the amount of fixed ballast to be carried was settled by practical 

 considerations and consulting with practical men, around New York before the ship sailed, 

 as we did not have time to wait for stability calculations before they had to sail with their 

 first loads. 



The President: — Professor Hovgaard, will you make such comments as you desire? 

 Professor Hovgaard: — I have no comments to offer. 



The President: — I am sure we are very much indebted to Professor Hovgaard for 

 this concrete presentation of very valuable facts. He had an unusually fine opportunity dur- 

 ing the war to obtain data of this character, and his paper will be very helpful to all who are 

 interested in this subject. Its excellence is such as we always expect in papers presented by 

 him. 



One of the speakers made an allusion to the protection of the lives of passengers in 

 peace times as perhaps being even of more importance than the protection of lives of troops 

 in time of war. Of course a state of war means that we have to protect ourselves against 

 conditions that fortunately do not confront us in peace times. One of the very great diffi- 

 culties encountered during the war was the effect of torpedo explosion on transverse bulk- 

 heads of ships. As a matter of fact, for vessels of certain dimensions, the effective trans- 

 verse subdivision which, in time of peace, would contribute greatly to the safety of passen- 

 gers, would, in time of war, due to torpedo attack, have precisely the contrary effect. This' 

 resulted from the increased range of damage created by the explosive disturbance either of 

 a mine or a torpedo. In other words, by increasing the number of transverse bulkheads in 

 ships of certain limited dimension, you make it almost a certainty that any torpedo or mine 

 striking that ship would eliminate the two-compartment safety margin by rupturing trans- 

 verse bulkheads almost regardless of where it struck. That is simply a comment upon one 

 of the incidental difficulties in war-time from which we are entirely free in times of peace. 



Those who had anything to do with the deliberations of the Safety at Sea Congress, 

 held in London in 1913 and 1914, realized very keenly the difficulty of obtaining bulkhead 

 subdivision which will meet all the requirements of the situation both as to saving* life and 

 making an adequate provision for carrying cargo. As a matter of fact, the two subjects 

 have to be handled more or less separately. In, order to carry certain kinds of cargo, you 

 are compelled to have a length of compartment which is not desirable, having due regard 

 to safety under damaged conditions. The only answer to that is that you must avoid car- 

 rying any more people than you have to on cargo ships which necessitate compartments of 

 that length. This is a slight digression from the question of buoyancy and stability, but 

 has been brought up by comments of some of the speakers and has an indirect bearing 

 on it. 



I am sure you will permit the Chair, on behalf of the Society, to thank Commander 

 Hovgaard for his most admirable paper. 



The next paper on our program is entitled "The Application of Standardization and 

 Graphical Methods to the Design of Cylindrical Boilers," by Mr. H. C. E. Meyer, Member. 



Mr. Meyer presented the paper. 



