a 
SALVAGE EQUIPMENT USED IN RAISING SUBMARINE F-4. 7 
ted to one end of each shaft. The wheels were built up solid of such steel plates 
as were locally available. The material used consisted of ten %-inch plates for the 
core, with 34-inch plates for the cheeks. The core was lined with Douglas fir so as 
to provide a reasonably smooth barrel for the bull rope. 
The windlasses were supported by three cast-iron pillow blocks bolted to the 
I-beams. Instead of fitting caps over the bearings to keep the shafts from rolling 
out, two 14-inch nickel steel U-bolts were fitted over the journals adjacent to the 
bull wheels, with an additional U-bolt over the middle bearings. The tendency for 
the windlasses to leave their bearings existed only when the bull wheels were locked 
during the fleeting operation mentioned below. If it had been feasible to lock the 
shafts at both ends at a radius greater than the radius of the line of action of the 
lifting hawsers, no such tendency would have existed. As it was, an uncompen- 
sated moment tending to roll the windlasses out of their bearings existed with the 
hoisting slings in certain positions, namely, when the line of action of the active 
forces lay outside of the triangle formed by the three bearings and the locking pin 
support. The U-bolts proved adequate, except in one case, when a shackle in the 
running gear carried away, permitting the windlass to back down suddenly on to 
the locking pin. The U-bolts in this case snapped off and the windlass jumped 
the bearings, fortunately without doing much damage. 
Power was supplied on each scow by a two-drum 8-inch by 10-inch hoisting 
engine. The drum lines consisted of 34-inch plow steel wire rove up to 
triple blocks. The running block of the purchase was shackled to the bull rope. 
This purchase, in conjunction with the multiplication of power due to the diameter 
ratio of the bull wheel and windlass barrel—namely, 50 to 15 inches—was suffi- 
cient to wind up the load on one of the scows. On the other, due to the design and 
condition of the engine, a luff had to be clapped on to the purchase to further mul- 
tiply the power. The distance between the triple blocks placed a limit of three turns 
on the number of revolutions of the windlasses obtainable without fleeting the tackles 
and rewinding the bull ropes. When the running blocks of the purchases had 
reached the end of their travel, the windlasses had to be locked to keep them from 
unwinding. The purchases were then overhauled by means of 4-inch manila lines 
taken to the nigger-heads of the engines. The bull rope was now unshackled, re- 
wound on the bull wheel by hand, and again shackled to the running block of the 
purchase ready for another lift. The large lead block for the bull rope is shown in 
Fig. 1, Plate 4. These lead blocks were built specially for the job and were so de- 
signed that the bull-rope socket could be dropped through the score of the block 
without coming up on the cheeks. 
The locking device for the windlasses consisted of a nickel steel pin slipped 
through a hole in the bull-wheel disc and supported by pillow blocks resting on the 
foundation I-beams. Four holes were bored in the wheels so as to make it possible 
to lock the windlasses every quarter turn. A pawl and ratchet would have given a 
greater range of locking positions, but would have introduced undesirable elabora- 
tion into the design and construction of the gear. 
