ENGINEERING PROGRESS IN THE U. S. NAVY. 93 



positive statements of fact. He states that the turbine ship is not any more ineffi- 

 cient in a seaway, that the efficiency is not cut down by the seaway, while, on the 

 other hand, we have a large number of reports from the fleet, made by officers on 

 board the ships, which point to the contrary. It is possible that they may have a 

 little better data on this point than has Mr. Anderson. All these points which Mr. 

 Anderson has been figuring on here (referring to diagrams) I have not got through 

 my head. Possibly I did not get it right, but most of it appears to be a question 

 of water consumption per shaft horse-power or per effective horse-power, or per- 

 indicated horse-power. Captain Dyson has stated in his paper here, with which 

 I think most of you will agree, that the basis we have it on now is fuel per knot, 

 which answers all these complicated questions, and is a sound basis from which to 

 start. 



Mr. Anderson states that the Idaho, Mississippi, and Connecticut are fre- 

 quently at the yard for repairs. They are. We have had quite a number of acci- 

 dents recently in our shafting, and I will take the trouble to explain to you gentlemen 

 that the casualties have been confined to the shafting. As distinctly stated in the 

 paper, the ship with forced lubrication is free from trouble; it is true — Mr. Anderson 

 to the contrary notwithstanding, because I have better data on that than has Mr. 

 Anderson. Mr. Anderson mentions ships that are mostly old — the Idaho and 

 Mississippi are ships that were laid down as 17 -knot ships, and put in the fleet and 

 required to steam with 19-knot ships, which we found was not successful from the 

 shafting standpoint. It seems that the firemen are now able to get out of the 

 boilers more power than the designers allowed for, taking data available at the 

 time they were laid down, and because of liberal boiler power we have developed 

 power with these engines far beyond what they were designed for. We are per- 

 fectly confident that we can eliminate shafting troubles in the cases mentioned. 



As to the question of corrosion. Of course, it is hard for me to answer the 

 broad statement that the corrosion is due to neglect. Any corrosion is probably 

 due to neglect, but if you have a machine in the ship which you must turn over 

 every fifteen minutes to keep it from corroding, it becomes a question of degree of 

 neglect in practice. We are learning more all the time about stopping the cor- 

 rosion. If it is such a simple matter as Mr. Anderson would lead us to believe I 

 would like to have him inform me how to overcome it. It is a serious thing ; some 

 ships corrode and others do not, and we have not solved the corrosion difficulty, 

 but we will probably do so in the end. 



Now as to the weight of machinery. I would like to ask Mr. Anderson from 

 where he got the weights he used. The weights that Captain Dyson gave to you 

 are positive; they are the absolute weights. We weighed the parts with a scale, 

 and I think some of the representatives of the builders here will agree with me 

 that they paid quite a price for that excess weight. 



Mr. Anderson; — The extra weights in the Utah over the other ships must 

 include a large amount for magazine cooling, such as additional ice machines, with 

 all their consequent pipings and fittings. 



