FIREPROOF PASSENGER STEAMER. 199 



Mr. Taylor: — Referring to Mr. Donnelly's comment on my remarks, I 

 will say that no comparison was made by me "on the cost of carrying a passenger." 



It was on the special request made by Mr. W. H. Fletcher that I referred at 

 all to the steamers Monmouth and New York, and the comparison as to the relative 

 economy in operation of these two steamers of practically the same speed was 

 based on the facts that both were used only for carrying passengers and only for 

 the summer season; that taking into consideration the original cost of machinery 

 and the cost of operating same, the cost of repairs and upkeep, counting interest 

 as well as cost of fuel and other necessaries, the New York was the more economical 

 per mile run regardless of the number of passengers carried. Of course, were the 

 steamers in question used all of the year, the results might be different. 



Mr. Andrew Fletcher: — Mr. Donnelly stated that I had not argued the 

 question as to the modern, short-service excursion boats. When we bring the matter 

 right down to modern excursion boats built for this New York service, there have 

 been but few built; the latest one is the Thomas Patten, a steel hull boat with 

 walking beam engine, feathering paddle-wheels, boiler enclosed with steel casings 

 to and including the hurricane deck, with the engine making about 600 feet of 

 piston speed per minute, against the Grand Republic with 400 feet of piston speed. 

 On Lake George and Lake Champlain we have built in recent years a number of 

 steel excursion boats, in which the improvements of recent years in construction 

 have been incorporated. 



Mr. Orrok: — Referring to the statement that the machinery weights for 

 excursion steamers varied between .2 and .25 tons per indicated horse-power, with- 

 out doubt Mr. Andrew Fletcher has much unpublished data which was not available 

 to the authors in preparing this paper. We found much diflSculty in getting the 

 actual test figures of the few steamers which we knew had been tested. These 

 figures in regard to the Mary Powell, the Rhode Island, the Bergen and Orange and 

 some others are available but, as is the case with seagoing steamers, such tests are 

 seldom made and much more rarely published. It would be of great value to the 

 Society if Mr. Fletcher would put some of the vast amount of data of this kind 

 which he must have in shape for publication. The weights as above stated include 

 boilers, piping, auxiliaries, main engines, girders, shafts and wheels and everything 

 excepting winches, capstans and equipment of that character. 



Replying to Mr. Dickie, the surface condenser was patented by Watt in 1765, 

 Cartwright in 1794, Brunnell in 1822, and by Hall in 1831. Hall's condenser, in 

 which the water was outside of the tubes and the steam passed through them, was 

 the first one to be fitted in a steamship. This vessel was the Hercules, saihng on the 

 London-Cork route in 1837. A similar condenser was fitted on the Megara in 1838, 

 and the Sirius, the first Atlantic finer to make the voyage under steam from England 

 to America, had a Hall condenser which was used during the voyage. Hall's con- 



