FIREPROOF PASSENGER STEAMER. 179 



depending on the character and service desired, so that when you consider these 

 facts the paper loses much of its effect with me, because I know in that first state- 

 ment he makes, as to the development, he has not thoroughly familiarized himself 

 with facts. I would not have you feel that I think the beam engines are the only 

 engines for these boats, but it always has been our idea, and I know that the idea 

 is shared by a large number of owners of excursion steamers who look for dividends, 

 and especially where the route is short, for say river and harbor work, that the beam 

 engine supplies largely the requirements. These owners want a machine just as 

 simple as they can get it, many of them must consider the first cost, the cost of opera- 

 tion and the cost of maintenance, and the simpler you can have a steamer's ma- 

 chinery, especially for short service, the better it is, for coal per indicated horse- 

 power per hour is not the only consideration. 



I would not have you think that we are purely beam-engine men, because, as 

 most of you know, we produced the first Parsons marine turbine ship that was built 

 in the United States, the Governor Cobb, and followed it with the turbiners Yale 

 and Harvard, and have built all kinds of marine engines, from the four-cylinder 

 triple-expansion screw engines to the four-cylinder double-inchned triple-expansion 

 engine-driving, feathering paddle-wheels, as in the case of the Fall River I,ine steamer 

 Plymouth, and the four-cylinder double-inclined compound engines, like in the Fall 

 River liner Priscilla, an engine of about 9,000 horse-power, and then when you come 

 to the Hudson River paddle-steamer Hendrick Hudson, and the new paddle-wheel 

 boat we are now building, the Washington Irving, for the Hudson River, with ap- 

 proximately 7,000 horse-power, and using a three-cyUnder compound engine of the 

 nclined type, you ca n see that our experience has covered quite a range. So that 

 I feel that the various types of engines have their particular places, and where a 

 beam engine for one service would be suitable, in another place it would be absolute 

 folly to use it, and so it goes, down through the list of the various kinds of engines. 



A reference was made in this paper, I think, as to the more or less flimsy char- 

 acter of the present excursion boats. We will find in the modern excursion boats 

 that really in the past ten or fifteen years there have been many refinements in- 

 troduced in their construction ; for instance, both the machinery and the boilers are 

 enclosed in steel all the way up. Steel girders are used in Ueu of wooden girders, 

 there are practically no wooden stanchions used, steel stanchions are used; and when 

 it comes to the state-room boats, considerable advance has been made in them, and 

 they have tried to fireproof them as much as practicable. We know that the sub- 

 stitution of composite board and of the so-called "never-split" panels is far safer 

 than the pine panels formerly used, which were much heavier and would ignite 

 more quickly, and their adoption has been quite a great advancement in the line 

 of safety. The Fall River Line, of which there are representatives here, has given 

 the fireproofing of a boat a great deal of thought and has made progress in that 

 direction. We all wish to be progressive and do all we possibly can to insure the 

 safety of the passengers. However, the commercial end must be looked after, 

 that is, the financial return to the steamboat owner, and it would seem to me, in this 



