EXPERIMENTS ON THE FULTON AND THE FROUDE. 13 



experience goes, I do not agree with his deductions. It all depends on what you ex- 

 pect a tug to do. There are many types of tugs, and as a branch of naval architecture 

 the designing of tow-boats would be a specialty for any man, no matter how clever. 

 If you go to Europe, if you go to Germany, if you go to Holland, or if you go to 

 Canada, and here in the United States, you will find the tugs are utterly different, 

 and that they are used in entirely different ways, and if you attempt to take a 

 British tug and use it in America, or if you attempt to take a German tug and use 

 it in America, or take a Canadian tug and attempt to use it somewhere else, and 

 the same thing applies to an American tug, you will have lots of fun on your hands. 

 I have tried it and know. 



I set out last winter to make an experiment with an internal-combustion 

 engine and a tug-boat. I built a tug 55 feet long and rather hurriedly ordered the 

 tug before I had the engine, but I thought the internal-combustion engine people 

 were up to date, and that I could probably buy the engine which I desired without 

 any difficulty. I found that the Diesel engine that I wanted to employ, no horse- 

 power, could not be built under 300 revolutions per minute, and as the tug was a 

 business proposition to be used in towing barges about five times its own length, I 

 did not take long to discover that 300 or 250 revolutions per minute were utterly 

 out of the question. I went to the engine builder and said, "Give me a reducing 

 gear. I want my engine revolutions reduced to no per minute." They finally 

 fell down, because they could not get what was suitable, or did not want to be 

 bothered with it. Finally I had to put in a steam engine, and the vessel is in 

 Canada doing good work, with 1 20 revolutions per minute. 



I do not hesitate to say, so far as my experience in tugs has gone, and I have 

 had about six built in Canada in the last few years, if you want to get assured 

 success — I do not mean in deep sea running — if you want general efficiency as a 

 tug, not as a speed vessel, you want to keep the revolutions somewhere around 120. 

 If you get above that, you will get into trouble. 



One of the troubles that any designer has to face in studying a paper like 

 Professor Peabody's is simply this: That, however he may agree with Professor 

 Peabody's findings — and I agree with quite a few of them — ^you cannot always con- 

 vert them into practice, because you have got to take a certain size of hull and a 

 certain size of engine, because the engine builder can offer a standard type at a 

 moderate price. Then you have to take a certain kind of propeller, because the 

 man on board is familiar with it and wants one with which he is famihar. You 

 are not free to have the boiler, engine, and propeller adapted to the ideas you have 

 on the subject. Most people want the plans for a boat gotten out in a fortnight 

 and they want the boat built in six weeks. They say, "We want the boat, we want 

 it right now, and we do not want a lot of experiments with engines, propellers, etc." 



I was going to say the reason I think in this country why such a pecuUar 

 propeller is used in tugs — and they are very pecuUar; they are very interesting — 

 if you study the propellers which are used for tow-boat piurposes you will find there 

 are as many freaks as there are good ones, but there is a reason for most of the 



