INLAND NAVIGATION AND BARGE CONSTRUCTION VERSUS 



FLOATING BRIDGES. 



By J. H. Bern HARD, Esq., Associate. 



[Read at the twenty-third general meeting of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, held in 



New York, November 18 and 19, 1915.] 



In preparing this paper, to be read before this society, composed of representa- 

 tive naval architects and engineers, I have sought for and been unable to find a 

 reason w^hy these very men have been so indifferent to or unfamiliar with the 

 subject as to be unable to build vessels that could economically navigate the interior 

 waters of the United States — interior waters which form in themselves a system 

 far better than in any other country on this globe. Yet one of the first reasons that 

 these very rivers and canals are idle, the reason that the Father of Waters may 

 be watched from the river bank for hours without seeing a boat pass, is un- 

 doubtedly the fact that the members of this society — trained, educated, able ma- 

 rine architects — have never put themselves seriously at work to replace the old 

 and obsolete river steamers that ply upon these waters. They have left these prob- 

 lems to laymen, with the result that, while it may be ridiculous for an investor, if he 

 wanted to build a trolley car line, to go to an old-time conductor or street car 

 motorman and take his advice how to build such a line of cars merely because such 

 man was twenty or thirty years in such service, it is apparently not ridiculous 

 for the investor to go to a captain or pilot and ask him how to build a river 

 boat, providing these captains and pilots can show many years of service. In 

 consequence of this we have still plying, upon our inland waters, boats such as are 

 shown in Plate 14. 



First of all you are bound to see the great handicaps that are imposed in 

 the nature of the structure of such vessel to economical loading and unloading. 

 The decks of these steamers could very favorably be compared with young forests 

 instead of steamer decks. 



An important feature of the old-time river steamers seems to be the amount 

 of smoke they can discharge from their funnels. The more smoke the more pleased 

 is the captain. 



Another very important part of successful or unsuccessful navigation, de- 

 pending upon from what angle you look at it, is the whistle. When I sailed a 

 modern self-propelled barge (such as is shown in Plate 15, contrasted with 

 typical river steamers) up the Mississippi on a round trip of over 4,000 miles, and 

 carried the freight profitably at half the cost of transportation on other steamers, I 

 was severely criticised for putting such a craft upon the river because its whistle 

 could not be heard for several miles. 



